


Binary Stars

by AProcrastinatingWriter



Category: RWBY
Genre: Experimental Style, F/F, I, Non-Explicit version posted to FanFiction.net, Or make multiple visits, You may want to grab snacks, gayer than the fresh-fallen snow, i dunno, or maybe one and two, or who knows, taking place in the mythical annals between volumes two and three, yes it's one chapter long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:14:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 84,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5121287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AProcrastinatingWriter/pseuds/AProcrastinatingWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn't take much for a flirtatious friendship to become much more. Just a lot of time. And a really long conversation.</p>
<p>And a really long "conversation."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Binary Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dcgcharlie](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=dcgcharlie).



> Before you begin reading this monstrosity, I feel you should know that it is, as tagged, a very experimental writing style. Specifically, it's one best described as "all of the metaphors." I understand if this is not to your taste. It might not even be to my taste; I dunno because I've spent the last four and a half months writing and editing this thing and am frankly done with it for the immediate moment.
> 
> The only other thing you need to know is that, as tagged, but as a last warning, if you want a non-explicit version of this fic you can find it posted on my fanfiction.net account. I hope you'll like at least one version of all this.
> 
> Anyway, go ahead, I hope you enjoy.

Some days, Blake Belladonna just didn't feel like going out on a day-long shopping spree. Some days, she felt like being alone.

Today was actually neither of those days.

Though, to be fair, it had started as the second one, despite the entreaties of her teammates. No matter how many sales Weiss insisted would be going on this weekend or how (genuinely) tempting Ruby's offer to buy them all milkshakes might have been, Blake had turned them both down. She was certain the team could find some way to have fun without her. In fact, she theorized they'd find _more_.

But then Yang looked at her funny for a few moments, like she was inspecting some system of scales – Blake and her dreary school uniform and equally dreary outlook on one side, everyone else she might run into that day on the other – and announced that she was going to stay home and keep Blake company.

That was about the point that the flapping butterflies in Blake's stomach had started making hurricanes in her head.

She'd read books that started just like this. She'd had _dreams_ that started just like this. They were _good_ dreams. They were mediocre books.

But her reality was like this, too lately – her days were full of Yang like holes were full of saplings, and every day seemed like something new was . . . growing, to put a shear to it. Blake was self-aware enough to liken it to the way she acted whenever she became engrossed by a novel, hiding away to turn another page, discover another secret, fill up her heart with literature and emotion.

It was an interesting feeling, reading herself. Having someone read her, sometimes. Especially since Yang didn't seem like the academic type. Or the type to slow down, for that matter. Or the type to let Blake lie in her lap while playing with her hair. Or the type to have long, drawn-out, heartfelt conversations, either, but that was reading ahead in the story.

Despite Ruby's insistence that today was a beautiful day, warm and sunny and perfect for getting milkshakes, the girl who might have been nicknamed The Charge of the Light Brigade instead retreated, and the team split up into partners to attack the day. Yang took off the gauntlets she'd planned on wearing out, Blake let loose the ribbon hiding her ears and retied it around her arm, and both of them might as well have stripped down naked for each other.

Dust, if only.

But this was fine, too. There may have been a world of milkshakes and handbags and other peoples' money outside the door, but there was so much more here, where the sun didn't reach. There was a good book, and warm hands, and a state like being in a dream, which seemed more and more like reality each day at any rate. A reality like dreams, like books, like her thoughts – it was a private reality, one Blake might as well have built for herself, one hidden away within the darkness. Just her and Yang Xiao Long. Maybe just a glimmer of light, then.

Let others enjoy the sunshine – Blake would always, save certain special exceptions, prefer the night's shade.

. . . possibly, with the way that pun walked into her head like it owned the place, she'd been spending too much time around Yang as it was. Ah, well. Better company than the White Fang. _Certainly_ better than being all alone.

**0-0-0-0**

"Hm hm hm hm, hmmm, hm hm hm hm, hmmm . . ."

The literary concept of irony was familiar to Blake – most literary concepts were, if only through osmosis and repetition. The Fang had been more interested in teaching codebreaking than cliffhangers, though they did show a certain expertise in poetic justice.

"Hm hm hm hm hmmm, hm hm hm hm hmmm . . ."

Blake was, in fact, familiar with irony in the same way most people are familiar with airplanes and lawnmowers, in that the familiarity did not stop irony from being an incredibly distracting noise to her literary mind.

"Hm hm hm hm, hmmm, hm hm hm hm, hmmm . . ."

And _ironically_ , of all the songs in the great wide world of Remnant that Yang could have chosen at that moment in time, lying in bed, gentle coaxing fingers running like calligraphy brushes through the inky locks of Blake's hair, she chose to gently hum _You are My Sunshine_.

"Hm hm hmmmm, hm hm hmmm, hm hm."

"Yang," Blake's tone was gentle, but insistent, a practiced pitch that could throw anyone and anything off-balance. "You know that's really distracting, right?"

Almost anyone and anything, really – Yang seemed to be specifically immune. In fact, judging from the (gorgeous, gorgeous) grin plastered across her face, it seemed that the first time Blake had tried that tone on her had been a vaccination of sorts. "Sorry, Blakey." She couldn't sound less sorry if she were writing the apology on a ransom note. "But I just can't help myself! You're like . . . oh, you're like my own little pocketful of sunshine! That's it!"

Yang's hugs could outperform an Ursa - possibly even kill one - probably had in the past – but Blake was much more durable and also maybe secretly enjoying the sudden sensation. "Well, first of all." Blake spoke through half a breath and half a smile, which somehow made a whole. "I'm anything but sunny. Second of all, you never call me 'Blakey' for no reason, and you're being _awfully_ affectionate." Yang's arms loosened, and Blake attempted to pass off her diamond disappointment as a cubic zirconium sigh. "What do you want?"

_Please say me please say me please say me please say me_ chanted a particularly obstinate voice in the back of her mind and the forefront of her thoughts. And upon further reflection, perhaps "obstinate" wasn't the word for it. "Persistent", perhaps, or "driven".

. . . she'd done too much lying to herself as it was. "Horny". The word was "Horny".

Yang interrupted her train of thought just before it crashed into the city and exploded. "Heh. Wow." All of Yang was bulletproof, including the smile. No way a bout with embarrassment was going to keep it down, for Long. "You're really good at seeing right through me."

"Sunshine does tend to illuminate things," Blake's head dipped, avoiding an embarrassing situation by the space of about one yellow top. She really needed to remove herself from Yang's lap one of these days.

"Alright, alright!" Yang laughed – more like lit – in reponse before letting go of Blake completely, at least with her arms. Her gemstone gaze still held Blake captivated. "I wanna see what you're reading. I see you reading it all the time, so it's gotta be really good."

Blake, master of avoiding suspicion as she was, shifted away from the lap of luxury slowly enough to avoid taxing herself unnecessarily."And you thought you could accomplish that by annoying me until I . . . ?"

"Hey, I caught glances!" Yang's smile turned before Blake's very eyes – not her smile. Her eyebrows moved subtly, and the entire character of her smile changed from silly to seductive. Magic tricks, then. "Not like you were reading it all that closely anyway."

That right there was a feeling. A familiar one. Like a stack of blocks falling to the ground, and the cheering of onlookers. Blake always lost when team RWBY played Jenga at game night. "Pardon?"

Yang and whispering were like milk and honey, and tonight was apparently like a very vigorous spoon. "You liiiiiked being pet, didn't you? When was the last time you turned the page? Ten minutes ago?"

Blake shrugged. Sometimes, there was no stopping the sun, only rocking the tan. "Your hands are surprisingly soft, and pretty gentle too. Celica's doing a good job."

"That and the healing factor," Yang returned the shrug, as was only polite. And then her grin multiplied in magnitude, spreading a shockwave over her face that lifted her eyebrows a, relatively speaking, good few hundred feet on her face. "Which means it's not just my hands that are soft; it's all of me."

"All of you, huh? I dunno." Yang's defined-like-the-word-"the"-in-the-dictionary abs, fully on display since the day Blake met her, had been begging to be touched for quite some time now. Blake, at that moment, decided to finally have mercy, though she made sure to make contact fingernail-first to remind them who was in charge around here. "You feel pretty . . . firm . . . here."

There was a game they played, Blake and Yang, and not one fit for RWBY's game night, either. It was probably dangerous. It was certainly sexy. It wasn't Twister, even if that game did fill all the qualifications.

Calling the game "sexual chicken" might have been crass, but there wasn't actually a better term for it. The future was as obvious as an oncoming diesel engine, even if Blake had her afterimages and Yang could probably suplex a train given the proper motivation. It was as inevitable as a glass of wine in an alcoholic's hand. It was as bright and stunning as a firework, and right now the only thing to do was watch the trail of green streak through the air and wait for the right moment to see the burst and hear the cry of freedom.

Blake wasn't oblivious. She couldn't be, with a nose sensitive enough to identify pheromones, ears trained enough to hear a rapidly accelerating heartbeat, eyes designed to see in the dark, and most elusive of all, basic common sense. She reveled in the little intake of air she was sure Yang thought she didn't notice. She drank in the amethyst lakes of her eyes swallowing up the pebble of her pupils. She memorized the shape of Yang's worried lip, and imagined that she might do a much better job of biting it. It was absolutely common sense; if it were any more obvious that Yang wanted Blake like Blake wanted her, there would be a sign around her neck that read, "Broody feline Faunus with self-esteem issues get in free." Flashing lights and everything.

So sexual chicken, it was.

But the problem was, and the reason for it was, the bars shut down in the morning. At some point or another, usually around two AM and when people were the drunkest, if the stories were at all correct, the barman would say, "Aright, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

Yang would say, "That was a lot of fun. Uh, it's not gonna change anything between us, right?"

And Blake wouldn't have a home to return to.

But on a lighter and a darker note, it was also something more elemental, more physical than that. Fun. Desire. Masochism and sadism, girl who absorbed kinetic energy and girl who wore ribbons as a fashion accessory, probably. That old joke, "Why do I keep hitting myself with a hammer, because it feels so good when I stop," right? Except, not exactly that. Something close, but not like it at all. Something like . . .

"He paused at her catch of breath," Yang's voice was a breathy whisper, and _hello_ , "Choosing instead to stare into her eyes. She trembled beneath him, but made no move to continue. This was the part that would make or break the evening. They always said, it wasn't the act, but the . . ." That smile could seduce a bride on her wedding night and leave the groom appreciative. " _Anticipation_."  
Ah, yes, that was the word Blake was looking for. Anticipation. Six months of tasting Yang on her tongue and refusing to swallow. "You caught a little more than a glance, then." Was that as husky a voice as Yang's could be? Blake sure hoped so.

"Steamy stuff, Blakey," Yang was uncomfortably – too comfortably, really – close, now. "Didn't know you liked that kind of thing."

"It's funny," Blake pretended she hadn't noticed. A little bit like standing in front of an explosion and acting like the back of her clothing wasn't on fire. "And the rest of the plot isn't half bad, really."

Yang's smile dropped off completely, and her eyes were suddenly someplace so far away it looped all the way around the globe to sneak up behind Blake and steal her wallet. Maybe even her heart. "That why you're still running your hand over my abs?"

Blake blinked. Well, cats always found a way to land on their feet – even she couldn't avoid _all_ the stereotypes. "You were petting my hair for a while, there. I figured it was only fair."

"Ah, makes sense. And it rhymes!" Yang tilted her head, but the way she smiled it was Blake who felt off-balance. "And all's fair in love and war, right?"

Love and war. Yang's eyes were artillery shells, her smile a minefield, her soul the whistling fall and consuming blast of an airstrike, and her curves nothing less than global thermonuclear annihilation. So Blake wasn't entirely sure she could tell the difference between the two right at that moment. Between all that and the petting, because who said war was hell, Blake was just about ready to surrender.

But she'd never admit that, of course. Yang might surrender soon, too.

Besides, even if Blake had wanted to, there was quite suddenly a feeling like being on a deserted island coursing through Blake, and there was no way she was going to be contacting the world from here.

Not a deserted island from the real world, all mosquitos and rugged life, but someplace warm and sunny, the ocean lapping up on the beach and with coconut milk readily on hand. Someplace away from the rest of the world, with a sea breeze sinking into the skin. Someplace no one would bother her.

No one but Yang, who was humming something just as tropical, something that deserved steel drums in the background, as her fingers pressed between Blake's ears and the most sensitive part of her scalp, rubbing intently. Suddenly, taking off her bow in the privacy of her own room seemed like the biggest mistake Blake had made that didn't have the White Fang's logo emblazoned on it.

Dust, those digits of hers were _dexterous_ . . .

A little too dexterous, as suddenly the pressure on her head ceased and Blake felt her book slip out of her hands. "Yoink!"

Blake brought herself back to reality one focused blink at a time. She'd had years of training, sometimes in the field, to resist torture, emotional manipulation, and rhetoric techniques. All of it was apparently wasted against a good petting. She was surprisingly okay with that. "Yang." The "authoritative voice" was usually about as effective as her "gentle, insistent voice" but she had to try something. "Give that back."

Yang snickered, a noise like stirring cake batter. Not in the literal sound, but in the feeling. A bit of effort, applied in a surprisingly sweet direction, given the raw materials to work with. "Turnabout's fair play, Blake. That's the most basic rule of friendship with Yang Xiao Long!"

Ah. If that was how the rules went, Blake could get involved in a philosophy like that. Especially if it involved rubbing Yang's . . . ears . . . in return. "Well, at least tell me which one this is, then."

"Que?" Yang asked, not quite flippant, but flipping. "Ooh, hoo, hoo, what have we _here_?"

Blake could go for the feelings of sounds, too. Here was a gun cocking. "Love or war, Yang. Which one is it?"

For the second time in as many minutes, Blake wished she was still wearing her ribbon. Not out of vulnerability, or embarrassment, but because it had a hidden camera tucked into its folds and the look on Yang's face was priceless perfection. It was also somewhat short-lived, as the book slipped from Yang's fingers, bounced off her grasp once, then twice, and finally righted itself in an exaggerated hug that Blake was sure the novels appreciated deep in their kerning.

"Uh, wh, what are you . . . thh." Yang's fingers turned pages with more speed than her sister's usual sprint, and now who was it that wasn't actually doing any reading? "That's not what I meant! It's just, you know, one of those – ow!"

"Papercut?" Blake raised an eyebrow, more a signal than an actual expression. A "Beware of the Cat" sign on the fence of her face. "The pen really is mightier than the sword, I see."

Yang paused in sucking on the offense against her person, and Blake tried not to be too disappointed about it. "Heh. Don't you mean the _pun_ is mightier than the sword?"

"That's all my mind has been fingering upon." Blake regretted it as soon as she said it.

Well, no, not really, not when Yang blushed like that, like a libidinous cocktail of hormones and excitement injected directly into Blake's racing heart. "Ah. Huh. Quick on the draw today, heh. Or, I guess I should say quick on the _claw_?" The smile dropped from her face like a hot pan sans an oven mitt. "Oh, wow, that was totally a Faunus joke, wasn't it? Oh, geeze, I would never – I mean, if you said it was okay, I guess, but uh, you didn't say it was okay - oh man, Blake, I am so -"

"Yang," Blake stopped her before she reached Remnant's mantle. "It's okay if you're just . . ." Wait for it. " _Kitten_ around."

The effect was so immediate as to make quantum entanglement look snailish.

Yang's laughter rose in pitch and descended in placement, ending up somewhere inside the mattress (sorry thing that it was) Yang lay herself on. Blake wanted to imagine she was prostrating herself before a superior punsmith. "You win," she gasped out, muffled as it was, and well, now it was Blake who was blushing. "You're the punniest person in the room." She spun over, landing on her back, and it was the first time in her life Blake had ever considered something both exactly like a puppy and also _cute_. "Congratulations, Blake – you've beaten the master."

"Thank you." Blake would accept her award with every ounce of magnanimity and humility she felt it deserved. "It was extremely easy."

Yang sat up under cover of another chuckle like a miniature symphony. "Someone's sassy today."

"You take my book, you reap the consequences." Blake tapped her fingers on her thigh, a miniature drumroll to build up to the bad idea that was forming in her head. Perhaps the book was not yet out of reach, even if Yang was leagues above her in just about every aspect (besides, of course, puns). "The papercut hasn't healed, I notice."

"Yeah, never could quite get the hang of fixing up these things. The one kind of injury too insidious for my glory to overcome!" Blake hadn't realized, until that voice, that Yang was a comic fan, but it made enough sense. "Wanna kiss it and make it better?"

Well, at this rate, Yang was going to end up one step ahead of her. "I've got a better idea," Blake said, carefully leveraging her words to move herself forwards. "But . . . close."

"Uh . . ." Yang swallowed thickly, acclimating to the sudden change in air pressures as Blake leaned in towards her. Or, possibly, just nervous, but Blake honestly had a harder time believing that could be the case. Either way, her hand moved of her own volition, taking Yang's wrist in her palm and warming at her pulse. "What are you doing?"

What was she doing, now that Blake thought of it? Scratching, she supposed. Not Yang's arm, though that had a certain dark thrill to it on its own, but scratching the surface of something. Something new, old, borrowed, tinged with a sad blue. There was an itch at the back of Blake's mind; had been for a while now. Maybe, six months of time. Scratching it. Scratching it just once couldn't hurt, right?

Possibly, she was being too quick on the claw.

But the look on Yang's face as she leaned in told her she was far too late to be doing anything as sensible as stopping herself, so she leaned forwards, thought of a million things she'd like to say, resolved to say none of them, and let her smile cheat for her. "I'm giving you your consolation prize."

She refused to break eye contact, and it might have destroyed them both.

Her taste buds made contact with a warm copper candle, and Yang's breath caught like a hook in Blake's brain, tugging, _painful_ , a release from the ordinary and entirely too dangerous to fathom. Fathoming was for suckers anyway, because there was something life-changing just on the tip of her tongue, a vision of the future with blood as the medium, and Yang's eyes were wide enough to see, maybe, into Blake's very soul, and she felt every glance and searing stare as she drew her tongue, slowly, carefully, certainly, around Yang's fingertip . . .

"Oh, sweet High Auras, yes." Yang wasn't precisely known to be spiritual. The thought that Blake might be considered a religious experience nearly brought her to her knees.

"Mmmm," Blake wished she could truthfully say the groan was affected, but she could literally feel Yang's pulse pounding beneath the her skin of her palm, and there hadn't been much she could do to stop herself. "What's the matter, Yang?" She poured, lemons and sugar, and received a pucker of lips as her reward. "Afraid of getting your fingers a little wet?"

" _Fuck_ ," Yang articulated, and Blake very nearly did.

Instead, she dipped her head, taking Yang's entire length into her mouth – probably not a good time for Ninjas of Love to be sneaking into her thoughts – and then slooooooowly dragged her lips back up, keeping a careful eye on Yang's own wandering orbs all the while. A slight pop, another go-round of her tongue, and a smile she justly classified as clever. "What was that?"

Yang was never "controlled", but she never needed to be. She was always so certain of herself, the ultimate argument both for and against the concept of free will, an immovable object in motion, which Blake had come to learn was slightly different than an unstoppable force. But here and now, Yang was stammering, tripping over herself, giving herself papercuts, and now . . . completely uncertain of what to say. "B – B – Blake, I . . . I. Oh."

Blake let her eyelashes flutter like butterflies in flight as she pressed Yang's wrist to her cheek. Maybe it was a tad too much, but in for a penny, in for a pounding. "You're clutching my book pretty hard, there." Her observation only made things worse, precisely as planned. "Isn't there something . . . else . . you'd rather be doing with your fingers?"

If anything could be too steamy for _Ninjas of Love_ , maybe that was it, judging by the way the book went flying away from Yang to land on the middle of their dorm room floor. Twitchy fingers, a bit lip, and a mess of hesitation and anxious energy would have revealed her heartrate even if the pulse next to Blake's ear (such sweet music) wouldn't have. "You have _no idea_ -"

Later on, Blake would look back at this moment, wonder at what precisely was running through her head, and then decide that the kiss to the wrist had been too much.

But _embrasser_ it was, followed swiftly by _partir_ as Blake stood, hoping Yang wouldn't notice the quarter-second of a lingering trace her fingers left behind. "Very kind of you, Yang."

"I, uh, s-sure? What is . . ." Yang was gaping, behind her. Blake was too practiced in The Art of Xiao Long to think that she was doing anything but. " . . . what?"

Blake bent to the book like molasses, slow, sweet, dark, and (quite unlike molasses) presenting herself in the best light she knew how. "Well, not as kind as you could have been." She sighed, navigating her way to the passage she'd left off at, or at least a reasonable enough facsimilie that Yang wouldn't be able to tell the difference from the outside. Like Blake intended on reading, anyway. "You could have bent the spine, treating it like that."

_Three. Two. One._

And speaking of bending spines and being treated certain ways, Blake found herself being grabbed roughly and thrown wholesale against the dorm room's wall, formerly gentle hands now pinning her arms above her head in a grip gravity would envy. The book dropped to the floor like it didn't matter – it never had, of course – and Yang growled.

No metaphor could match the reality of Yang growling, and if there was a simile, Blake would like to see it. No words could match the way her fingers pressed, vengeance, into Blake's wrists, or the way her face came inches from Blake's own like she'd imagined in her head a million times but much more threatening and about seven million times hotter. Yang's eyes slowly drained of the blue half of their tint into a volcanic fury that, if looks could kill, might classify as both the last thing Blake would ever see and certainly the way she wanted to go.

Well.

_Well._

Well, the slight and welcome pain in her back meant this probably wasn't one of Blake's more lurid dreams, though it might still possibly have been one of her _most_ lurid dreams. Perhaps, possibly, she had pushed Yang a _tad_ too far. And maybe, just maybe, it would be fun to push her just a little bit further. "Is something the matter, Yang?" Keeping up that controlled tone of voice was like steering a lifeboat in the middle of a hurricane, her heart was beating so fast.

Fingers tightened in a grip that was likely the talk of all the titanium girders in town, and Yang leaned in a little further (and here was Blake, thinking she didn't have any room left to move in). "You're going to pay for that one."

"Is that so?" Blake totally-on-purpose allowed her eyes to trail a path over Yang's blazing brilliance of a body, basking in the summer sun. "What exactly do you plan to do to me?"

The way Yang looked at her was evil, and probably very illegal, too. It should have been illegal, at the very least. "What do you think I'm going to do, Blake?"

_Yes, make me, take me, do horrible, awful things to me, I shan't tell a soul, what the_ _**hell** _ _am I thinking?_

What was Blake thinking, precisely? She had given Yang an inch and was now staring down such a long and winding road that it was becoming harder and harder to think straight. In fact, it was growing progressively easier to think very, very _gay_. "I don't have the foggiest idea." She had several crystal clear ideas to match Yang's eyes and succubus smirk, but not a single foggy one, no.

Yang stepped, rather than leaned, utilizing a slightly-too-warm knee to nudge apart Blake's thighs and begin making very new and exciting memories for the young Faunus. The rest of her traveled upwards, pulling her mouth and its warm, damp air next to Blake's ear, pausing to make certain she was paying attention. If she, _either_ she, moved even a nanometer, everything was going to change between them, and quite possibly the dorm room wasn't going to survive the transition. Certainly the bed and/or this wall wouldn't.

"I'm going to leave you alone."

Her presence evaporated like all those lurid dreams at the first sign of sunrise, leaving Blake just about as awkward, confused, and wet. Yang was back across the room, a spring in her step (and her backside, noted that same treacherous, libidinous portion of herself from earlier) and humming that same old tune. For the rest of her life, Blake would remain unable to think of _You are My Sunshine_ without the weather getting slightly damp, so to speak.

Apparently, this wasn't just a one-player game Blake had been playing. An odd thing to be smiling at, given the circumstances, but two heads – four hands – two tongues – were always better than one. Yang was probably worth about three times as much as any of those things

Of course, it would help in their game if the next move to make was more apparent than progressiveness in faunus-human relations. It was relatively simple to catch Yang off-guard, but that was only because she specced for offense, to use a term from that odd game the boys played sometimes.

Benders and Brawlers, she thought it was called? Yang played too, occasionally, had this character who could control all four . . .

At any rate.

Blake took a small step forwards, testing the waters with her big toe. Pleasantly warm, sure, but she could see the approaching waves just fine from here. "So, were you still wanting this book then, or . . . ?"

Yang laughed, and her heart was in it, and that almost ended the game in her favor right then and there. "Oh, no way you're playing this one off!" She stuck her leg out, the same one that had been between Blake's legs only moments before, and the only thing that could possibly distract her from that fact was what Yang said next. "I could bare my thigh in a thunderstorm and it wouldn't be as wet as it is right now!"

. . . alright. Yang had been bluffing, from the look of things. But the fact that Blake had to actually consider the possibility was a practical pair of Aces. Perhaps this one was just out of her depth, then, but Blake believed it could yet be salvaged. "I hear water on the knee is a serious medical condition. You might want to make a doctor's appointment."

"You gonna be my nurse?" Yang waggled her eyebrows, and Blake swore if it was anyone else . . .

"Down, girl." The eyebrow thing was symbolic; Yang's enthusiastic ones were matched by a single subtle movement of one of her own. "I'll have to be your anesthesiologist if you keep that up."

"You're gonna have to try a lot harder than that to top me." Yang's demeanor could only be described with the phrase "she fell into sin". "Or to get on top of me, for that matter."

"Seemed remarkably easy before," Blake tossed the book in one hand – being truthful, she wasn't even sure which one it was. "Just had to start reading and you practically offered me your lap, not to mention musical accompaniment." Keeping at it was the key; and there, at last, was the lock. "You never really did answer why you were humming that song in particular, you know."

"Well, duh." Bluntness was so integrally a part of Yang that Blake had come to associate it with the color yellow. "It's because you're my sunshine, Blake!"

Well, now that was worth a raised eyebrow. Blake would have to start being more conservative with them in the future if Yang was going to be saying things like that. "Alright, I'll bite. What do you mean by that?"

"It means you light up my life!" Yang enthused, as if her own goldy locks weren't substituting for the setting sun outside the window.

"Obtuse metaphors are Professor Ozpin's shtick, Yang." And hers, even if they stayed locked up safe and sound from the vicious beasts known as literary critics, generally. "Try again?"

" . . . you're hot?"

"Yang."

Yang groaned like the teenager she technically was, but it caught halfway through and turned into the laugh that Blake had missed dearly for all this time it hadn't been around – dozens of seconds' worth of the utmost anxiety and agony. Truly tragic. "It's not that hard to figure out, is it?"

Blake noted the blush, shrugged casual, like she was a world-famous actor and the whole world was watching her being interviewed. "Maybe I just want to hear you say it out loud."

. . . maybe that was actually true, come to think of it.

Yang scoffed, and even that had a certain cheery quality to it, like a counter-rhythmic pulse of EDM in a classical music hall. "Or you're just a sadist."

"That too." Some things darkness would only exacerbate, rather than hide. Some things were black enough to stand out against the night sky. "But either way . . ."

Her sighs sounded happy, too – was Yang actually real, or was she some sort of Jungian shadow of Blake's made manifest? "Alright, fine. Blake Belladonna, you make me the happiest person on Remnant, and I dearly wish to spend the rest of my life with you. Marry me."

"Oh, this is so sudden." Blake's monochrome monotone, though untested since her pre-Beacon days, was still running like a dream. "Whatever will your family say?"

"'Get it, Yang'," Yang's grin could have stopped a tank. Well, the fists attached to the grin, but Blake would bet on the grin itself holding its own too.

Blake's scoffs were more like gunshots than music: more precise and deadly, but maybe not as much fun to listen to, barring special occasions. "Are you allergic to being serious?"

"You know how I'm going to answer that," Yang's hands met her hips like the way that Blake's lips wished for, and they tilted in a way that made her think maybe she just wasn't worthy of such lofty aspirations.

"With a smile on your face." _And your hooks in my heart._ "Unless you can think of something else your mouth would be doing?"

"Hmmmmmm," Yang's was too heartfelt a person to really be having trouble with the thinking process. "Nope. Nothing." There was a trick to Yang's eyes, Blake was sure; how else could they still look so appetizing half-hidden like that? Must be the same spell that was layered over the rest of her salacious silhouette. "Unless your book wants to give me some ideas?"

"After the way you threw us around?" Blake still had her sense of impropriety, after all. She'd chosen to ignore it for the duration of this conversation, but in all technicality. "I'd be surprised if it bothered to give you a second papercut."

"Fair enough," Yang's shoulders shifted; she didn't precisely "shrug." That would imply she didn't care. "How about you?"

"Oh, I'll give you a 'papercut', alright . . ." Blake's anger was a painting, exquisite, evocative, but not actually anything real beyond paint and canvas. Nor, really, was it intended to be seen as such.

Yang, meanwhile, was the dream-crafted critic every artist painted in hopes of finding and perhaps, on lonely nights, imagined inviting up to their personal gallery for a "private viewing." "Looking for an excuse to suck on my finger, huh? Man, Blake, didn't peg you for having a blood fetish. Makes a lot of sense in hindsight, though." In other words, she took what Blake offered and inspired her, against what meager better nature she might have possessed, to soar to ever-greater heights. Closer to the sun.

"Mm hmm." Which brought Blake's thought processes full circle. "Meanwhile, you seem to make a habit of yanking people around. Why exactly am I your sunshine, Yang?" She brought her hands together, book in between, as if by channeling the power of Ninjas in Love she might up her Charisma stat enough to convince Yang to answer her. "Seriously. I want to know."

Yang was quiet for several moments, which Blake supposed was a period of time she should cherish for its rarity, if not its taste in music. Finally, she sighed. "I sort of already told you." She shuffled a tad, rolled her shoulders, let her hair catch and refract the setting sun – maybe that last one wasn't on purpose, but by all the stars in the sky did it look like it was. "You . . . make me happy, Blake."

Oh.

Oh, my.

Hearts skipped beats and skin tingled with sudden bursts of flame and the world seemed to shift on its axis, and still Blake stood there, absolutely certain of what she had heard, and overjoyed. The only mysteries left were why, precisely, and a gentle wandering wondering of exactly where they were supposed to go from there. So, when Blake said, "Pardon?" it was less a question and more a stalling tactic, please ignore the growing smile on her face.

Yang laughed, rich and a little dirty, like someplace Blake could grow crops in. "Man, you're really gonna drag this one out of me, aren't you? I don't think I'm getting a choice in the matter."

"You don't have to say anything you don't want to. Ever." Secrets were things of broken glass and diamond, rare, beautiful, valuable, and dangerous – and you couldn't always tell where one quality began and another ended. Some secrets, released, were just like a poisonous gas: a slow death sentence. "I wouldn't dream of it."

Yang genuinely considered this, if her face was any indication. It usually was. "Nah," she finally said amidst an air of resignation that hopefully wouldn't be polluted with metaphorical hydrogen cyanide at any moment. "This one's been coming down the pipeline for a long time now." She sat down on the bed, looked up with a smile, and motioned for Blake to come over.

This wasn't at all the situation Blake had hoped for those things to occur in.

But Blake made her way over nevertheless, silly sayings about cats and what curiosity did to them setting up shop at the tentpoles of her mind. "You really don't have to -"

Yang silenced her with a look, and now that she knew she had that power, she'd probably use it a lot more often in the future, shoot. ". . . do you honestly not _want_ me to?"

Yes, yes, curiosity kills them. It would kill _her_ to find out. "If I'm being honest?" She heard satisfaction brought cats back. "Yes. I do."

Yang nodded, slow, beginning the clockwork process of whatever this conversation was slowly becoming. "Okay," she said at last, shifting gears and position and possibly the universe, for all Blake knew. Sometimes it felt like Yang was at the center of everything; heliocentric. "I've . . . been trying to figure out how to say this for a long time, now." Like a flower growing from snow, Yang's smile was lovely and inexorable, despite attempts otherwise. "Let me tell you, it isn't easy figuring out the right words to say to a person with two sets of ears."

"So I've heard." Blake realized only after she'd said it precisely what she said, and improvised a quick twitch of her more cattish features.

"You know, when I say things like that, people get mad at me, but when you say things like that they think you're adorable." The flower bloomed. "How is that supposed to be fair?"

"I don't make the rules; I just break them." Blake wasn't sure where these little quips were coming from; maybe from the intense desire to avoid thinking about exactly what was going on here.

It was so easy to make Yang laugh, and yet every time it happened, Blake felt so accomplished. "Oh, wow. That right there is why I adore you."

Blake didn't, wouldn't ever, pressure Yang on the precise phrasing she'd just used. People weren't coal, and diamonds were far less valuable than souls. "It's a gift." She eyed the bed like it was a trap she planned on springing, making note of the precise position of knives and slings. "May I sit down?"

"Plop your head into my lap, for all I care." Yang's good cheer could signal a ship over a thousand miles of water. Blake heeded, docked properly, but chose not to rest her weary head quite yet. Instead, she simply sat down next to Yang, feeling for all the world like she was embarking on a journey – by bus – to a destination – who knew where – that was going to be thrilling, terrifying, and other near-synonymous adjectives. "Okay, so, like, don't clog up the pipes while I'm saying all this, alright?"

Blake had heard, someplace, that if at any point you ever felt like you were dreaming, to check the locations of nearby objects and see if any of them have disappeared or moved inexplicably. This sentence was so very strange that she at this point checked her alarm clock for object permanence. As a side note, it was apparently 7:43 in the evening. "Huh?"

Confusion was contagious, if a doctor's only evidence to suggest anything about the condition was Yang's face. "Because of the pipeline thing?" The sickness cleared up as if by divine intervention. Sheer nepotism, as far as Blake was concerned. "Right. Sorry. Not my best shot at being poetic!"

"Ninjas of Love you aren't," Blake confirmed, as if Yang wasn't her own unique novella of blazing imagery and persistent passion.

"That cuts me deep." Yang looked so serious as she said this that, just for a second, Blake believed it. Then she broke into a grin, and all possible worries were melted like so much snow with the gentle heat of it. "What I mean is, I'm about to take you for a long, wild ride on Bumbebee. Metaphorically speaking. So buckle up and no backseat driving."

"Much improved." Blake took a moment to deconstruct the symbolism. The girl was a workout, both literary and libidinous. "So what you have to say is important and a little strange, so I shouldn't interrupt?"

Yang's face twisted like it was tasting lemons and deciding the best way to describe them in her food blog. "Basically. It's like . . . I dunno. It's this whole huge thing, you know?" Genuine uncertainty didn't suit Yang, and that somehow seemed to extend into a slightly more befuddled world around her, as though she were casting off the offending outfit. "I don't have a clue where I should even begin."

"I hear beginnings are good." The words came out before Blake could stop them, change them into more matching clothing, or at least something suitable for the season, and send them on their way.

Yang snorted, Blake resisted the urge to giggle at it, and the world kept turning on its new off-skew axis. "If you want my biography, you'll have to wait in line like everyone else." She laid her face in her palm, and Blake had never seen Yang actually look tired before, come to think of it. "Sort of a . . . lifelong thing."

"Lifelong?" Blake considered this, except not really. One must keep up one's appearances. "I think I can stick with you long enough."

"Blake Belladonna, mistress of the smoothest moves." Yang Xiao Long, mistress of the sideways coup d'oeil. "You realize you're not exactly making this easier on me, right?"

"I guess I just can't help myself around you," Eventually, she supposed, Blake was going to run out of feet to place forcefully into her mouth. "Sorry. I'm interrupting. I'll be quiet, now."

"Nah, I'm just pulling your leg." Well, Blake had to get the foot back out somehow, and who better than Yang to help her out with that? "Being honest, I don't think I could go through with this if you were just sitting there all shhhhhh."

Blake let herself giggle at that one – of all the witticisms, the physical comedy, the genuine moments and cheesiest jokes, and she chose to reward Yang making funny noises? Matched the rest of their relationship, at least. "Glad I could help, then."

Yang hummed, and privately Blake imagined that Yang was turning the key to her motorcycle's engine, and the only thing Blake as a passenger could do for support was wrap her arms around her stomach – _woah_. Thoughts. Not appropriate for the situation. "What I have to say is very important, and I don't want to lose track of it or . . ." She sighed, sinking just a bit deeper into her bedsheets, and Blake wondered if maybe there were exercises one could do to make their bodies that expressive. "Or chicken out. So I don't mind if you want to say something, but let me say my whole piece before you start really talking about what's on your mind, okay?" She laughed, coughed, something between the two, and Blake marveled at how even that could sound attractive coming from the right chest. "Man, I sound like a jerk, don't I? You're always a really good listener; I shouldn't be telling you to clam up or whatever."

"It's absolutely fine," Blake responded in a voice like falling leaves, slow and predictable, a gentle breeze with a crunch at the end. "You deserve to say what's on your mind. I'm listening. I promise."

Yang stilled like the words were an incantation. It might have been, because if previous data was any predictor for the future, there was no way Yang would ever go still on her own. Either way, the spell broke into tiny little pieces with only the smallest breath, in and out, twice over. "You remember I told you about my mother disappearing, right?"

Blake nodded. Then, realizing Yang wasn't actually looking at her at the moment, she said: "Absolutely. I wasn't quite so sleep-deprived to forget something _that_ important."

Instead of something like 'coulda fooled me, Ms. Laser-Dot', as Blake had been expecting, Yang simply waited a few moments before continuing, her voice closer in tone to crystal than her usual volcanic roar. "Part of me wondered if it was my fault she left, maybe. I know, that sounds ridiculous; it is ridiculous, I mean, I was like, what, six at the time? Nothing I could have done." She shook her head, like a summer breeze under a cloudy sky. "That was what I figured, and that kind of, sort of, hurt the most. I didn't even matter, when it came down to it."

Yang was clutching her own arms as if they'd keep her anchored to the world, and Blake wondered when she had come under the impression that Yang was invincible. "Helpless," she mirrored, in word and in memory.

"It was the worst thing I'd ever felt." Yang's voice shouldn't ever shake like that. "I wanted to do anything I could to make sure I never felt like that again. So at first I tried throwing myself into looking for her, and you know how that turned out. After that, I realized that . . . as much as I loved my mom? As much as I wanted to see her again? What I really wanted was to hold on to what I had left. And it sort of just hit me that if I didn't want to be helpless, I had to be the opposite." That everlasting smile couldn't be held down for long, it seemed, though it was a bit unsteady on its feet standing up again. "That's when 'anything I could' became 'everything I had.'" She paused, and so did Blake's thoughts. "That isn't, like . . . weird, is it?"

It wasn't a particularly difficult question, but Blake considered it carefully nonetheless. She'd had enough of the taste of her own feet for one evening. "People react to loss in different ways. Some cling more closely to those around them, some dwell on the memory, and some . . . " _Have cat ears._ " . . . some draw into themselves and shut out the world. I'm about as far as you can get from an expert on what's 'healthy'. But." A million smiles, a million pieces of joy – surely Blake could return the favor just this once. "I've never met someone as kind or as caring as you are. I hear that, generally, that's supposed to be a good thing."

Yang's head ducked away not quite quickly enough for Blake to miss the cherrybomb glow of her cheeks. An evening's worth of carefully careless words, lingering touches, and death-defying stunts of seduction hadn't given her nearly as strong a sense of the word "explosive" as that simple stated fact. "Heh. Might wanna try looking in a mirror sometime."

"What do you mean by that?" Blake's face scrunched up like a failed exam between confused and angry fingers.

"Hey, you're smart, too. You'll figure it out." Yang tilted her head into her hand, and Blake recognized the need for a resting place. "But, yeah, I just try my best to make people happy, you know? Every day's a battle and every smile's a victory; that's my motto. Only . . ."

Blake tried to stay silent, let Yang come to her own conclusions. But the noiseless air she'd always found peace in now seemed stagnant and heavy in her lungs, and she'd never had quite the fortitude to hold her breath. "Giving all of yourself means leaving none _for_ yourself."

Yang seemed to be having trouble breathing, too, judging by the shaky breath. "Some days, I don't feel like I'm even there. Those days, I don't know where I'm going in life or why I'm going there, or even where I _don't_ want to go. I like stuff fine, I like not doing stuff fine, I dislike doing some things, but I don't really . . . know. Not a thing." A hand through her hair, and Blake noticed by the lack of light languishing in those locks the sun had finished setting. "Like, honestly, yesterday, my brain just stayed in bed all day."

Blake remembered the slight slump of Yang's spine, the tired droop at the corners of her eyes, the listless energy that ran like she was a leaky faucet to to nowhere in particular, and worst of all, the artificial way she seemed to snap back to normal whenever she thought someone was looking. "I noticed. I didn't want to pressure you about it, but I noticed." Actually, _that_ was the worst part: Blake was the only one who seemed to.

"You looked concerned," Yang murmured, and the small smile on her face shaped the words into something spellbinding. "Your ears kept twitching whenever you looked at me. I was kind of worried you were gonna blow your cover."

The idea of accidentally ruining everything she'd been striving towards her entire stay at Beacon didn't seem all that important to Blake at the moment. "Even then, huh?"

Yang didn't answer her question. Well, not immediately, at least. Blake was an expert foot at that particular song, dance, and hesitant two-step. "I always notice. It's kind of my thing, you know? We . . . sort of established that." She looked at her, and suddenly Blake was nothing but a speedy-beating heart. "But you're the first person to notice when it's _me_."

There were, of course, advantages to not wearing the ribbon. For instance, it wasn't infrequently that Blake's ears – the upper ones – got hot, burning even, and the black silk covering them didn't exactly allow for breathing room. It could happen when the weather was hot, when Blake ate too much, when she was stressed, or (most relevantly), when she came within a whisker of blushing. "I'm trained to look for weaknesses." A quick smile and a hand to her cheek should hide her own strawberry sunrise, right? "I figure I should use that sort of power for good."

The sudden, soft pressure on Blake's shoulder let her know that Yang had chosen to rest her head there. It was a gentle, soft notice, the kind that came up slow and reasonably, so as to not incite panic. It was still incredibly frightening, given the context. "Mmm." Blake had often thought she could feel Yang's smile before, but now it was a literal statement, and now it was a spike of adrenaline and errant daydreams of the future. "This isn't crossing a line or anything, is it?"

It took Blake a moment to register the sentence, and when she did, there weren't enough hands in the world to hide the glow on her face. "After lying my head in your lap and feeling your knee between my legs?" She paused, less for purposes of consideration and more for dramatic effect. "Possibly, but I think it's a bit late for protests on my part."

Yang snorted, and the brief puff of air on her skin affirmed she might as well have been back at the wall, waiting for a culmination of . . . some sort or another. "I don't know how I'd keep going without you, sometimes."

That was a cold bucket of water of a statement. "What?"

"Not literally. Probably. But it feels like it." A turn of the head and a brief sensation of eyelashes fluttering, and the world may have stopped spinning after all. "Like I'm a stranger in my own head. Sometimes. I just get so wrapped up in people's problems, and what they think of me, and what I'm supposed to be doing, that I get . . . buried in it. 'Here lies Yang's sense of self; we barely knew her.'" A shrug, like a pebble, and Blake felt the ripples wash over her. "I dunno. I guess that's why I've always kind of been an attention hog. I just wanted _someone_ to tell me who I am."

"Yang." There wasn't much more to be said than that.

"I never really stopped looking for . . . for anything, I guess. Not for myself, or for my mom, or for . . . _anyone_ to understand me. A place, a reason to be, another person to keep fighting for." A warm finger traced a path up and down Blake's arm, and Blake followed it as though it might lead home. "You know, it's sort of funny." As Yang spoke, Blake idly noticed the synchronicity of their breathing. How couldn't she have? "All these years searching, and it's you who ends up finding me. Through the back of an Ursa."

Yang's head lifted, and the loss of the weight on her shoulders left Blake feeling more burdened than ever. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Her face have must been worthy of a snapshot.

Yang looked her straight in the eyes, and the stars out their window could not possibly have made more beautiful constellations. "I don't need anyone to tell me who I am when I'm around you." She beamed less like sunlight, and more like the ideal of sunlight, perfect, golden, brighter even than her eyes. "When you're there, Blake, I . . . I _remember_. I find parts of myself that I never, never knew I had. Strength, bravery, joy. Everything that had been hidden in the shadows for . . . as long as I've known myself. That's what you light up, that's why you're my sunshine. I remember who I am, and I know who I want to be. I might not know exactly where I'm going, but I do know who I want with me on the journey." The hand on Blake's arm drew into itself across her skin, and as Yang gulped, Blake truly understood for the first time what the process behind drawing up one's courage felt like. "I'm in love with you, Blake . . . and I don't think I'm ever gonna stop feeling that way."

There were a good chunk of sentences that had been circulating in the back of Blake's head for many years now. "She's actually a faunus", "it's all your fault", "I always knew you were a monster", etc., etc. There was a list of phrases, more a list of charges, that went on and on and on and on and on, and any single one of them, spoken aloud, would utterly and completely destroy her entire world.

But suddenly, like a breath of air and a sky of light at the end of a drowning man's long and painful swim, the impossible happened.

Blake found a sentence that could _save_ it.

And for every snippet of snark and sarcastic remark uttered that evening, she didn't have a clue what exactly she was supposed to say now.

Yang coughed in a way that made Blake retroactively expect a tumbleweed. "Well. That's out in the open."

"How long?" There was something, possibly a dissertation on why the phrase "something was better than nothing" was only an old wives' tale.

"Uh . . . forever?" Yang ventured, after looking around for, presumably, hidden cameras. "I uh, thought I already said that, bu-"

"No, no, I mean . . ." Blake mapped the logic's route in her mind, just to make sure it was even within a reasonable distance of this conversation, before she let herself speak again. "How long have you felt this way?"

"Oh!" Blake had met lamb faunus that looked less sheepish than Yang did at that moment. "Wow, completely misunderstood that one. Uh . . . would you believe me if I said 'no clue'?"

Blake let her head tilt, because, who knew, maybe that would make everything else look level for once. "Huh?"

"There was never a moment where I thought about it and said, 'holy cow, I'm head-over-heels for that super-cute kitty I hang out with all the time.'" Yang's mouth turned upwards as she scratched her cheek, possibly trying to scrape off their red with nonexistent fingernails. Maybe she could do the same for Blake later, if she was going to keep handing out compliments like that. "Actually, there totally was. There were kind of a _lot_ of moments like that. But none of them were the moment I realized it for the first time, you dig? Heh. I don't think there was a single time where my heart suddenly screamed in my ear about it or anything, so much as . . . so much as . . ."

"A process." Blake supplied, in return for one of the many favors Yang had done her in the short time they'd known each other. "Like growing a garden. Nothing is ever really 'grown'. Just growing."

And as if that sentence had completed some impossible task, instead of being a mild observation about the effects of sunlight on petunias and daffodils, Yang flopped back onto the bed with a wintry sigh and an evergreen smile. "You know what?" She asked, in the tone of Archimedes having just stepped from the shower, "I think maybe I always knew. Right from when I met you. It was like you were a part of me, you know? But you were another part I kept forgetting, and I only remembered how to get back when you lit the way for me." A chuckle like nectar from the sister of a rose. A sunflower smile, Blake might say. "I guess, when it comes down to it, that's what I mean to say by humming in your ears all the time. You're my sunshine, Blake. You light my way."

The static cleared away, the melodies revealed the elegant underlying structure, and it was Blake's world that lit up with light and shook with sound. "No one's ever told me I'm 'sunny' before."

Yang sat back up, realizing, perhaps, the task hadn't been nearly as complete as she'd thought it had. "You've got this sort of sexy brooding loner thing going on, buuuuuut you're lacking in the actual 'gloom' department."

Blake barked a laugh, and immediately recognized the irony. "Imagine the world's biggest storm, swelling with its own self-importance." She looked to Yang, and hoped something in her own gaze might communicate a picture through the distance between them. Like the stars in Yang's twilit eyes. "Then you might have something approaching what I was like before coming to Beacon."

Yang was silent for a time. Then a time-and-a-half. Blake tried not to worry about it, and let her work at her own pace. "I adore every moment I spend with you."

Blake had learned a long time ago to make certain she listened carefully to statements with no discernible cause. It was the only way to discern. "I can tell." She almost said 'me too', but this was Yang's time to shine, not hers. Sunny day similes or otherwise. Blake would get her turn at the confessional. "I'm honored."

"I mean it. When we hunt together, it's like nothing can stop us, but when you look at me, it's like I stop in my tracks. Except my heart, which goes all pitta-patta-pitta-patta, but you probably already guessed that." In turn, Yang had a certain narration to her that was all her own, and Blake could read it for hours. Utterly fascinating. "Every move you make, you make like you meant to do _exactly_ that, like you've already got everything figured out and the rest of us are all just trying to catch up with you before you ascend completely into the heavens. I mean, I've never met someone who can say stuff when they're quiet before, but you do it _all the time._ " She paused, and Blake wondered if Yang recognized the volumes that span of breath wrote out plain as day. "Not to mention, you're way funnier than I am."

Blake blinked, as she stumbled upon the sheer disparity between that thought and reality, leaping the gap just a quarter-second too late. Then she blinked again, further falling with the realization that Yang was expecting her to say something observant about this strange pathway she found herself on. "Although I've given up on my days of blowing up railways, for the most part, I'm going to have to cut your train of thought there. _I'm_ wittier than _you_?"

"I've been keeping track of our little tit-for-cat tonight. The score is 5 to 4, your favor." Then, before Blake could gather her thoughts, Yang gently took them – and the conversation – back out of her hands. "I'm good with puns, but you're good with them too – you're good with everything. I mean _everything_. You're smart . . ."

"You make the highest grades out of the four of us," Blake said. It was maybe not the best time for it, but she recognized a contest when she saw one.  
Yang raised one brow as she turned to look at Blake, and the battle was on. "You kick butt . . ."

"Who was principle in knocking Roman and his mech down about six pegs?"

"You're calm, cool, _and_ collected . . ."

"You're passionate, powerful, _and_ put-together."

"You're sexy as _hell_."

"Says the gorgeous girl with the body of the goddess of athleticism."

"No no no no, I gotta stop you there," Ah, this was certain to be good. "Look, if Ember Celica and Bumblebee were to have a June wedding and produce a super-sexy-robo-lovechild, you'd be, like, twice that child's hotness on the hot-o-meter."

"A lovechild of Ember Celica and Bumblebee," Blake repeated, if only to give her brain time to reclassify Yang from "sunflower" to "celica"; obvious, in retrospect. "Are we talking about you, here?"

"Well, duh," Yang's voice matched the flex of her upturned arms: toned to perfection. "Have you seen these guns?"

_Do not, under any circumstances, touch the bicep, Blake. Don't do it._ "Frequently."

"Sun's out, guns out," Yang recited with all the solemnity, rhyme, and sheer, unbridled joy of a young child's poetry recital.

"Okay, but technically the sun went down a while ago." The metaphor sideswiped Blake, and her Mercedes of thought was forced to take an early exit. "Wait. If I'm the sun . . . are you trying to say you _show off_ for me?"

"You know it." Yang could easily have been mistaken for a childhood daydream with that kind of mischief written on her countenance. "What, like you don't, bend-over-and-pick-up-my-book-real-quick?"

Breathe in, breathe out. If with proper meditation one could control one's body temperature, surely Blake's practiced mind could imagine the heat wave rising in her cheeks was only a passing summer breeze. In some respects, it was. "That was a special occasion. You stole my book. Desperate times . . ."

"Call for disparate measurements?" Perhaps it was Yang who was really the more catlike between the two of them. At this moment, she certainly looked like the cat who'd gotten into an entire lake of cream, somewhere off in Candy Land.

And, possibly, for that pun, she deserved it. " . . . a masterstroke." Understatement, along with sneaking, poetry, and gloom and doom, was one of Blake's many finely-honed talents. "Did you come up with that off the top of your head?"

"More like the top of the bed," Two knuckles' raps against the headboard gave rhythm to Yang's statement. "But yeah."

"Well, either way, that was actually pretty impressive. 5 to 6. Bonus point. You're in the lead." But there were more important things to consider than who was winning at the moment. Game called on account of . . . explain. "And leading us away from our prior conversation, I notice. I believe you'd been trying to say, perhaps, one last thing to me?"

Yang's laughs were so vibrant, so colorful, so real, like a aurora borealis, that any attempts by her to fake a laugh were immediately spotted by their similarity to Blake's choices in fashion. "Ha ha ha ha!" Like that one, for example. "No, that was, like leading up to stuff, not away from . . ." She stopped on a luen, face stooping to pick up a smile she'd lost somewhere back along the way. "Yeah, okay. I'm still terrified."

"I've been listening, and I've understood every word you've said. But I have to confess, it's still a little difficult to imagine you being scared of anything." It was what terrified Blake more than anything else: ghosts. Not the spirits of the dead, but the living without spirit. The idea of Yang terrified was so antithetical to everything she was that a thousand horrors – some perpetrated by her own quick claws – were far easier to imagine than her retreating from anything. "What's got you so worried?"

Yang was quiet as a grave, and Blake prayed that there wouldn't soon be raindrops on her tombstone. This was probably counterproductive, considering that statement was entirely "self-important storm levels of gloom" worthy. "The thing I like best of all," Yang briefly resurrected, then sank back into the cold, hard ground. Then, like some mild manner disappearing into a superheroic countenance, she turned her usual radiance up to full blast, rising fully from her earthen bed in accordance, Blake was certain, with some prophecy or another. "I'm getting there, trust me. Just getting a running start!"

Blake felt like the world's biggest fool for having worried. "Take your time. I'm not going anywhere." Yang's huff and puff signaled that she was getting ready for a homewrecker. "Lifelong, remember?"

Yang's laugh shook the scene, and she needn't have bothered with blowing the house down. "That's kind of the point." She barreled onwards before Blake could get a leg up, and tripping was, perhaps, inevitable. "The thing I like best about being with you, Blake, is the challenge of it."

At some point when Blake wasn't looking, Yang had apparently ceased to be straightforward. Something quantum, perhaps, and gosh darn it Schrodinger and his pet of all things had to both pop and not pop into her head. "You think it might be a good idea to rephrase that?"

"Hmmm . . ." Yang drew her mouth into a pout and Blake couldn't help but keep coming back to lemonade, for some reason. "Nope."

"Figured." Sad news, Schrodinger: your cat was dead.

But Yang could bring life anywhere. "There's a thrill to being challenged that's better than riding the fastest motorcycle in the world. Trust me, I would know. And it is knowing, you know? Knowing how much you have to improve in order to call yourself 'better'. You and me get in little contests all the time, like who can think of more puns, or who can kill the most Grimm, or who has the best comeback, or . . ."

"Who can play utter havoc with the other person's sexuality the most effectively?" Blake was justifiably proud of her innocent eyelash flutter: she'd been born with it, lost it at an early age, and practiced for years to get it back.

"Wasn't gonna bring it up unless you did, but yeah, that's probably my favorite game we play." Yang looked over Blake's form like she was eyeing a new dress, and Blake quite suddenly felt very in fashion that season. Frill her up as much as necessary, so long as Yang's body touched her silken skin. "You're _really_ good at it." Look who was talking.

"Oh, and here I was thinking your favorite was chess." Yang's concentration and desire to win focused like laser sights over a tableau of black and white waiting for her to make a move? Perhaps it was Blake whose favorite game was chess, come to think of it.

"We did get to be partners because of that pony piece, so maybe." There were moments in Blake's life that made her days worth going through, such as every time Yang opened her mouth.

But that was enough horsing around. "It comes down to sparring." Blake understood. She wanted to believe she always did, if Yang would only open her mouth. "The games we play aren't just games, are they?"

"Yeah. The games themselves aren't really _important_. It's just that you keep giving me opportunities to play." She moved her hands like she was building something up, either in her head or clockwork, fragile, in front of her. "It's like this: normally, when I lose a race on Bumblebee or a spar or whatever, I'm pretty sore a loser about it. Stuff goes 'boom'. But every time you pass me you look back like you're expecting me to be right behind you, and all of a sudden, that's where I'm going with my life. Right behind you. Blake, you don't just make me want to live up to you." Another look, like a world where honey might be made from amethyst gemstones. "You make me believe I can actually do it. I _love you_ , Blake. Really. I've thought about this for a long time, now." Stars fell. "I've just been so scared of losing what makes our time together special that it stopped me from telling you sooner."

And there was the point Yang had been getting at for – understandably – too long. "I meant what I said, I promise you that." Blake tried for one of Yang's smiles, something comforting, kind, careless of one's self. "Life. Long."

Yang showed her how it was done. "I know. But you have enough masks to keep track of, and plus, I'm sort of selfish." The smell of warm chocolate chip cookies transplanted into a touch might match the way Yang's fingers, gentle, felt upon her cheek. "I want you to show me how you're really feeling, even if that hurts me, and this isn't the kind of thing you hear without changing how you treat someone, you know? I really wanted to hope that maybe we could keep . . . playing around like we do. Making each other better. Even if you don't like me like that."

The needle of Blake's thought process slid across the record of this conversation, and with a sound like a horrifying realization, Blake noticed that these cookies were, in fact, oatmeal raisin. "At the risk of sounding redundant: huh?"

Yang's hand, regrettably, withdrew, leaving Blake to focus fully on the miscommunicated map of her heart that was unfolding before her. "It's sort of obvious, you know?" Her voice, tinged with that sadness, was reminiscent of a cloudy day after the snow had fallen and the sun was just starting to break through. "You wear your heart like a ribbon in your hair. Trying to hide things with it."

A small black cat of a faunus writing lovelorn words three years ago would have killed for a simile like that. Had killed for less than that, if indirectly. "I . . . have to admit. This isn't quite where I saw this conversation heading."

"I get called a lot of things, but predictable isn't one of them," Yang said, while somewhere in the background, Blake was now wondering how many other of Yang's smiles to her this evening had been so hollow, so false, so leaden with well-meaning false cheer. So painful. "Really, I just wanted to clear the air. Say my piece; I've . . . made my peace. It's hard to turn someone down, especially someone you turn up with. I understand, really."

Blake wasn't sure she understood anything about Yang nearly as well as she thought she had. "I don't recall us ever 'turning up'." There was a distinct lack of anything more intelligent to say than that at that point in time.

"Work with me. Work with the puns." There would someday be a moment unruined by odd sentences and too-quickly turned phrases, Blake was certain. But it didn't look as though it was going to be today.

"I thought there were puns everywhere if you knew how to look?" Like quicksand, Blake's now-sluggish thoughts hardened when struck – though she wasn't quite used to having to strike them herself. "No. Wait. Hold on. That's entirely off-topic, I . . ." This was probably not the reason that Hunters and Huntresses were taught deep-breathing exercises, but this conversation suddenly felt as impossible as beating back the darkness that threatened her entire world. In some symbolic senses, it was exactly the same thing. "What makes you think I don't like you like that?"

". . . ah, I gotcha. Wanna know where you slipped up. I can dig that." She was digging something, alright – possibly Blake's grave, the way this conversation was threatening to kill her. "Knowing I was in love was a movement, and so was realizing you didn't like me like that. You never seemed like you didn't like me as a person – I know you do – and I never heard you talking about anyone else or anything like that. Saw you looking at Sun a couple times, though. Plus, I also never heard you talking about me, or saw you looking at me, or . . ." She laughed, and it was real, despite everything, and Blake wasn't sure she could have managed. "Gosh, Blake, we've tried to seduce each other so often, and you're _unflappable_. I can't even get you to blush."

All at once, their games didn't seem nearly as fun anymore. "Well, I mean, I was _trying_ not to blush, and there . . . was the scratchy thing," she attempted, in the same way a man at the bottom of a canyon "attempts" climbing.

"Eh, that doesn't really count, though, does it? It'd be like you licking my clit and calling that a victory." A breath of silence was just enough time for this to sink in, and then Yang opened her mouth and destroyed Blake's entire sense of balance once again. "Heck, _I_ pretty much tried that! You didn't even stutter!"

Blake debated with herself how wise it would have been to say that rubbing her ears was nothing like that other thing, and also how truthful. In the end, all she could find to say was: "Was stuttering what you were going for?"

"Maybe call it a last ditch attempt to see if I was wrong. Maybe I finally wanted to win something, say I was doing better than you, show off. Little of column A, little of column B." This sense of resignation fit Yang like one of her little sister's sweaters. Too tight, too uncomfortable, far too revealing. "No, actually, the reason I did it was to bring you back to me. That's the real reason I know you're not into me, because you're not ever completely _there_. We hang out all the time, and we have fun, but you're always focused on something else besides me. Like studying, or training, or . . ."

The tumblers in Blake's head fell into place with a click, the lock on a heavy, solemn tome was unsealed, and the situation could be read plain as day. "Or a book. Something I find more engaging than massage or song or . . . or you." She could have phrased that better, she realized even as she said it.

"Yeah." There was density to her affirmation, like the entire force of the conversation had been compressed into that single word. Heavy. "I don't blame you, trust me – you've got your own thing you like doing. I'm not trying to guilt you or say you're doing wrong by me, but . . . I don't know. I just think . . ." She shut her eyes like a book that ended badly. "You probably deserve someone a lot better than me."

The silence enveloped them like a numb, frostbitten winter's day.

"I'm a big girl, you know." Yang spoke as if she feared one tone out of line might trigger an avalanche, an eternity of silence and cold. "I can take rejection."

"Is that why you sound like you're about to cry?" Blake asked, as gently as she could manage, and she suspected nowhere near gently enough.

Yang's breath came in shaky, as though she was uncertain there was really air there for her at all. "I promised myself, if I could ever just build up the strength to talk to you like this, then I wasn't going to make you feel guilty." She didn't realize the power she held: a solitary sniffle could shatter Blake's uncaring facade and too-caring heart alike. "Not the first promise I've broken, I guess."

A night of casual, intimate touches, and suddenly Blake didn't know what to do with her hands – but she settled for settling, a palm on Yang's (all too apparently) weary shoulder. "Don't cry just yet, okay? Not until I've had my chance to respond." She only hesitated for a moment before grabbing Yang's chin, turning her head with gentle insistence to let amber and amethyst alloy. It was somewhat selfish in and of itself; she wanted to look at Yang as much as she thought Yang needed to look at her. "Not until it's all over."

Yang didn't respond immediately, searching for something in Blake's face like a desert dweller searching a cave for water. "Sure." A swallow, an expression hollow as a crab's shell with something pinching living inside it. "Right on. Gotta keep fighting, right?"

"I've never known you to give up before," Blake said. Her lack of action had been the poison, so she swore she'd be the anti-venom. "Though apparently you've come into the practice of making assumptions. You might think we have this little game we're playing solved, but you only have half the pieces available to you. You've said your piece, now let me say mine, and we can puzzle out where we go from here some other day." She smiled, and hoped it reached Yang. "Do you think you can do that for me?"

A pause. Like the space between throwing the knockout punch and the ref confirming that you hadn't, in fact, just hit a little _too_ hard. "I dunno, I . . ." Yang sagged to a stop. Blake, in turn wondered if she'd made the wrong move – wondered when she'd gotten so deep into this at-play mentality that she even thought of _this_ as a series of moves. Then, at last, she closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and held it, and finally, Yang smiled gamely. "Alright. Anything for you."

"Thank you. I hope I'm worthy of your faith." Blake leaned back into her memories, like a warm blanket in front of the roaring fire that was Yang Xiao Long. She'd beat this wintry weather yet. "I've never been much of a talker, so either this shouldn't take too awfully long, or else I've got way too much bottled up for either of us to be comfortable. Still, if you'll allow it, I'd like to sculpt a tale for you just as involved as the picture you've painted for me today. To mix my metaphors." She smirked, and leaned her head away as if the action shifted her entire balance. It was enough of a smirk to do that, if smirks could. "I apparently need to practice my authoring skills, anyway."

"Floor is yours." Yang could accomplish with the subtlest shift in facial expressions the same thing that one of Blake's smirks could, if smirks could. "Ceiling, too, if you want it."

For lack of a witty retort, Blake sat in thought for a few moments. "You know I was part of the White Fang. But I haven't been forthcoming with the details, so far. I think maybe it's time for that to change – just a little bit." Her heart in her chest felt like, of all things, a hot air balloon, weighty and ponderous but slowly lifting. Just how heavy was the load she'd been carrying?

"You sure?" Yang always promised she'd be the first to fall in battle – protecting someone, most likely. She'd never said as much, of course, but Blake could recognize the signs – the self-sacrificial attitude paired with the reckless personality.

"You deserve to know." Blake could make sacrifices too. She'd been born into it, as a matter of fact. And in point of that same fact: "My beginning . . . I never knew my birth parents. In all aspects that mattered, I was raised by the White Fang to punish the Schnee's sins. From the age I could lift a sword, I was trained to be, I suppose, an assassin."

People called Nora bouncy, but as energetic as she could be, "I know you're talking more like eleven or twelve, here, but I'm imagining a four year-old swinging around a black sword and talking about how they're gonna be the best ninja ever someday, and it's freaking adorable," There was no question in Blake's mind that it was Yang who was best able in their circle of friends to bounce back from anything.

"You're not as far off as you think. Make the sword a sign board, and you're right on the money." There seemed to be some sort of sale on sudden realizations, as well. "My formative years were spent staging peaceful, if angry, protest, which explains a lot about me in retrospect, I'm sure."

"Like the flag thing!" Yang had just seen a two-for-one sale, it sounded. "On our first day in class! I always wondered where you got it from."

If Yang really wanted to see what Blake looked like when she was off-balance, that would be the way to do it. Either that or something involving that wall and finishing what she started, but admitting that would have both set the blushbomb off early and put aside any possible chance of them finishing this conversation in a reasonable manner and amount of time. "I thought that was something everyone would do to support their teams. Cheer them on." Wicked words danced on her tongue, and she ejected them from the gathering hall before she quite realized what she was doing. "You were imagining something with pom poms, perhaps?"

"A cheerleading outfit?" Yang fidgeted beneath the idea, and the innuendo was almost too natural. "Actually, uh, I was sort of thinking a baseball uniform would suit you the best. Maybe some holes cut out in the helmet for the ears . . ."

And that was, to put not too fine a point on it, something of a curveball. It was also something entirely off-base from their current conversation, but Blake filed it away for future reference at any rate. "I see." Just in case. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Uh, thanks." Yang coughed into her fist with enough enthusiasm to make Blake reflexively check her other hand for memory-erasing devices. Which was silly. Because if Yang had any memory-erasing devices Blake wouldn't remember finding them after the fact. "Continue!"

Blake gathered her thoughts like seashells, ocean-carried memories of things long since dead. "I can fault the White Fang for a number of things, but child-rearing isn't actually one of them. They provided for me, kept me safe, taught me about the world, and even taught me valuable life skills. Besides the poisoning and jumping around fighting everyone things."

"Like how to seduce people?" Yang asked, very nearly on cue, all things considered. "Later on, I mean. Because there's no way you came up with some of that stuff you did on your own."

It was like a wave crashing over Blake's consciousness, washing away all of her hard-earned seashells. "You're not going to let that die, are you?"

"If by 'die' you mean . . ." Well, if Yang was going to be that effective at keeping things alive, the gentle art of assassination could go die in a ditch.

"Duly noted." Blake would pay a silver dollar not to let that happen again. "And, no. They didn't teach me about _that_ at any point. That all was more . . . instinct than anything."

Yang's gaze was not withering. Heat was withering. Too much starch was withering. A poorly cooked fish was withering. This look was dead on arrival. "Instinct? Really?"

Blake scratched the back of her neck like it might agitate some different words into coming out. "And books. Lots of books."

"I figured." Blake would never have called Yang insufferably anything, but this was about a 9.5 on the smug-o-meter. And worse yet, she was cute when she was smug.

Not even remotely fair.

Still, life wasn't fair – the fact that someone like Yang seemed to be interested in someone like _her_ was proof enough of that. Nothing really for it but to work with what you had. "The White Fang wears masks for a reason, as obvious as it might be to say. Anonymity has always been our greatest strength." _Like Grimm._

"Like secret agents," Yang supplied, an invitation to a child's party, written in carefree handwriting. A surprise party, evidently.

" . . . exactly like that." While Blake had long been certain of her genre and embraced the conclusion that had been written,Yang was a fairy tale ending, and worse, she was contagious. Even the Big Bad Wolf ended up alright in the end, when she was around. "But it was more than just a matter of strength for us, which is quite possibly why the Fang is so good at it. Oftentimes, being able to keep your cards close to your chest was the only thing that kept the organization from folding."

"So they taught you how to keep secrets." Yang was going to steal her glory at this rate – there was a twinge, judging by the data between four different ears, that meant she was beginning to cotton on to the situation. Like when she started murmuring aloud at the numbers in their hyperkinetic physics homework started adding up, and Blake had never quite realized the extent of a mathematical curiosity she was. "Bluff."

"And go all in, if necessary." Blake could play the numbers game. She could play a lot of games. In fact, "It's more of an apt metaphor than you may already think it is. Not just poker, of course, but risk and sparring in general. I was too young to understand what was really at stake, in those early years, so they fell back on the oldest parenting trick in the book." Blake let her chin rest upon her hand, an acquiescence to the rising tension in her back as she approached her point. "Everything they taught me was framed like it was a game of some sort."

Yang's nose scrunched, and somewhere very deep down, Blake had a brief but definitive battle with the urge to take a picture. "Like hide and seek?"

"Keeping people from finding our meeting places." With her big toe, Blake traced the old, familiar hallways and secret passages – all different now, she was certain – in the carpeting. "Making and reading codes were puzzles, tactical simulations were brainteasers. Parades aren't really games, of course, but they were close enough for me to take part in the protests and sort of understand what I was supposed to do." This was like finding a forgotten box three years after the moving vans leave, and finding it full of old pictures of all your friends. "And I was good at most of those things. Not all of them, particularly not espionage or the use of, pardon the pun, catspaws. Well, of course you'll pardon the pun; what am I saying? But I was good at most of them. And I loved all of them with all my heart."

"It's how you grew up," Yang spoke like someone who had just discovered an underwater cave system while scuba-diving: with awe constrained until the surface could be reached. "Playing games was how you interacted with your family. The whole _world_!"

"Hidden sees hidden. It was one of our basic philosophies as an organization." There was a wist to the waste, a purpose in a time of chaos, and even now Blake had to smile at the idea that there was a treasure to be discovered in every word everyone said. " _Ninjas of Love_ expresses the same philosophy as 'Looking underneath the underneath'. We all knew, as a general rule, that we meant more than just what we said or showed." Shame, ever the uninvited guest, crashed the party at this point. "That probably also explains a lot about me, in retrospect."

"Like why you're so quick to pick up on stuff," Yang said, as if she'd just said 'Faunus are equal to humans' or some other very basic and objective truth that Blake was entirely prepared to go to war over. "And so considerate."

If only Yang didn't make such a habit of striking her speechless, then Blake might be able to articulate precisely how amazing it was that she seemed to do so on a daily basis. The incongruity of what she knew to be true about herself and the amazing person Yang somehow believed her to be was such an odd mismatch, like when one set of her ears picked up on something at a pitch her other ears couldn't, that her heart was able to break in and start shooting off bottle rockets before her brain could even begin hiding the matches.

"Yang Xiao Long," Blake was sort of used to keeping her voice monotonic, until moments like these, when suddenly, she was anything _but_ , all daring and chocolate. "You absolute flatterer, you."

The usual over-the-top attitude seemed to melt away from the heat in Yang's cheeks. "I guess I'm kind of making it hard for you to say what you need to say, huh? Sorry."

"It isn't as if I mind, you know." No, she didn't mind at all, as in, she didn't seem to be using her mind properly every time Yang did anything whatsoever. And even worse, somehow, she was beginning to like that. "You're basically the first person to ever say anything like that to me."

"Ah, heh heh . . . wait, hold on." Yang questioned things like stoplights questioned traffic, so Blake braced herself. "You said that the White Fang taught you all that stuff about secrets and games when you were a little kid. Weren't they all, like, hippies and stuff back then?"

Ah. Yes. Heavily revelatory conversation left unfinished. Yang really did have that kind of effect on people. "Well, no. Not really. They were far more peaceful than they are now, but to tell the truth, the difference between the White Fang of before and the White Fang now isn't as wide a gulf as everyone believes it to be." Blake had to be careful she didn't lose herself in her memories, which was odd considering how many times she'd revisited them. "The idea that humans will always believe we Faunus are inferior, the desire to take up arms and revolt, the hate and mistrust; they didn't spring up overnight. If anything, they were the seeds the White Fang sprung up from."

"It's kind of hard to sit back and say they're entirely wrong, huh?" Yang's voice rang like windchimes, pushed more than played, a little hesitant, somewhat quiet.

"Often, yes, it is." Blake tried, as a general rule, to keep movement to a minimum. It was a leftover of a childhood not wasted, but rejected: conserve your energy for when you need it and avoid drawing undue attention to oneself. Here and now, though, turning to Yang felt like something she needed to do with her whole body instead of just her head. "But sometimes, occasionally, you meet a human that makes you believe there might be something more to tomorrow after all. Someone with a good heart, a listening ear, a fantastic sense of humor, and strengths both loud and quiet. But that's getting a little ahead of myself, even if I've yet to get ahead of you."

"You mean all that?" Yang's eyes moved guiltily away from Blake's own, and Blake hadn't even realized she'd leaned forwards. It was an inane thought, and yet she couldn't help but feel in that moment as though magnets were entirely unaware of their movement towards each other. "I'm just . . . trying to be a good partner. Especially after that whole thing at the end of last semester . . ."

"Exactly." At least she was able to fight off the urge to pull a Nora on the end of Yang's nose, instead leaning back to a proper distance. This was supposed to be a serious talk, baseball aside. "I've spent my entire life rubbing elbows with professional killers and hired guns, trying to avoid causing too much friction, seeking to improve myself only so I could, maybe, catch up to them. I suppose on some level I expected the same thing from Beacon." She let a giggle free and, ok, maybe not entirely unlike Ms. Valkyrie. "Imagine my surprise to find out that the best partners don't just work with you, but _alongside_ you. To make you better. On and off the battlefield."

Yang blinked beneath the alluring glow of moonlight, and Blake was struck by the urge to compose a haiku. "I . . . well, I wasn't . . ."

"A bombastic girl," Blake held up her fingers, counting off the syllables. It wasn't really necessary for her, but it would hopefully let Yang know what she was doing. "Beautiful inside and out. She shows me the way."

Yang was silent for a moment – presumably, stunned by Blake's mastery of wordplay and sophisticated choice of words – before bursting out into the kind of laughter that seems to shake the room it occupies. Well, not quite shake. Bouncy house laughter. "Blake, I'm sorry, I'm really touched you'd write a poem about me . . ." She coughed into her other fist with enough force to leave Blake safe from all potential memory alteration procedures, "But you're kind of a dork. You know that, right?"

Blake was surprised to find that hearing this pleased her. She was even more surprised to find that she wasn't at all angry with herself about that fact. "Says the girl who, I'm certain, reads X-Ray and Vav with an almost religious fervor."

"Holy scriptures, X-Ray!" Yang could narrate one of Professor Port's books and make it seem exciting. "You just can't appreciate the subtlety and nuance behind the last few issues. They are masterworks. Like _Ninjas of Love_!"

Laughter had always been a challenge for Blake, but as Yang had so elegantly articulated earlier, she longer saw challenges as things to be avoided around her. "I'm pretty sure this started out as a serious conversation."

Another laugh from Yang, another opportunity for Blake's heart to run away with her. "I guess I just have that kind of effect on people."

"I know you do. It's done wonders for me." And some things were just too difficult to resist. "A lifetime's worth of brainwashing, and you come along and dirty my mind back up again like you'd been doing it all your life."

If Yang turned any redder than she already was, she was going to have people mistaking her for her little sister. "Well, I can." Yang stopped cold like a frozen brake pedal, unable, apparently, to quite bring the current line of conversation to the halt it needed to come to. "I can definitely say I'm proud of that accomplishment. Happy to be of service."

Blake felt her thoughts align, like roadways and street corners, a map back someplace familiar. If not necessarily the nicest part of town. "I guess I wasn't ever really brainwashed, though. If I had been, I wouldn't have ever left."

"For what it's worth, I'm glad you did," Yang said, in the small, quiet voice of a fifty-foot giant who didn't want to hurt anybody. "I'm glad I met you. You and your unwashed, dirty mind."

Blake was glad Yang was there to ground her – even it was still having your head stuck up in the clouds, even if they were a stormy gray. Yang was a silver lining, perhaps. "I had to. I didn't belong in the White Fang any longer." What Blake said was at odds with the small smile on her face, but they presented the same politics to the rest of the world nonetheless. "The games stopped being fun, but I never stopped playing them. I had to. Instead of being for the survival of the White Fang as a whole, they were for my own." A mirthless chuckle, like an apple from an evil queen. "I got a lot better at I Spy subterfuge, let me tell you."

Her words reverberated like dropped pins in the ensuing silence.

"Uncle Qrow always used to tell me something whenever I got too angry, or too scared." Yang's voice rang like a walk on the beach, slow, contemplative, and careful of sudden jagged edges. "He said that it wasn't what we thought, but what we did that was important." She paused. Presumably, squinting at the sun was involved. "I don't think I _really_ got what he was trying to tell me before now."

"He has a point." Blake was able to get half the sounds out, at least. "When it comes down to it, swords and signs really are all the difference between the two Fangs. Same secrets, same members, same revolutionary zeal." A sigh through the nose, because the mouth would be giving away too much, or something. "Same idealistic, naive self."

"Playing the same games." When Yang whispered, it was the same as when other people shouted, and the echo of it rang in Blake's head.

"You know, sometimes I feel like the least intelligent person on this planet." It was a bold statement to make with people like Cardin wandering the halls of Beacon, but then again Blake wouldn't have even known of Cardin's existence unless she had decided to hide from the rogue terrorist organization she used to be a part of in an _academy for Hunters and Huntresses_ in the first place. "I honestly thought – if you can believe this, after the sleepless nights and threats to our lives – I honestly thought that maybe we were making a difference for a while, there."

"'That's why we're here, right?'" Yang coaxed the words out more than said them, a series of uncertain syllables hiding in caves made from pauses. "'To make things better.' 'This girl's a lost cause.' Basically Weiss's entire existence, too. Man. Right from the beginning." Her voice was a feather, light and airy, but drawn inexorably, nevertheless, to the ground. "Life at Beacon must have been like a million-mile guilt trip, huh?"

"I'm not opposed to the idea of penance." Blake spoke without venom, but she wasn't unaware of the bite. "All I wanted to know was what I was guilty _of_."

It was the kind of sentence that occurred to people when they were lying in bed with the covers over their head at 3 in the afternoon with all the lights off, and Yang was far too intelligent to do something like turning on the lights. "I wish things had gone differently for you."

"I've lost people, too. More than I can count." It was a stubborn, splintering thought, and a thought like a stubborn splinter. Ignoring it or, on occasion, forgetting about it, didn't change the fact that it was there, waiting to be hammered into the cerebellum like the tiny stake of wood it was. "I promise I'm not trying to make this yet another contest between us, but at the same time . . . it is the truth."

"Yeah, that's . . . that's one contest I'm pretty sure I can go without winning." At that moment, if the way Yang was speaking could be compared to anything, it would be a pebble. One already in flight, heading towards the water, and desperately trying to avoid ripples. "I don't think I want to be part of that contest at all."

"Me either." Blake bunched her fists into the fabric of her tights, wondering how exactly, or if exactly, that related to the ways cats tended to knead at things when they were happy. If only to keep from wondering about anything else. "They didn't die, or leave me, or the Fang, not usually. But every day, we were told, in one shape or another form, that if the humans wished to make monsters out of us, we would grant them their wish. Every peaceful demonstration, every cheek turned, every kind word spoken in place of an evil thought, and we threw it all away for the idea that if we acted like animals we'd be treated like people."

"And they changed." Yang filled in the answers Blake had kept skipping over. Just like when they were doing homework – only this time, the problem was that Blake knew the information all too well as it was. "Right before your eyes."

And always right at the forefront of Blake's thoughts. "It was like a parade in your head, celebrating exactly how terrifying we could make ourselves." The words spilled forth like vomit. Something posionous her body needed to get rid of, immediately. "Do you know what it is when the people you love – your family – begin to make monsters of themselves, and insist on taking you with them whatever dark paths they travel? What it means when images of protest become symbols of violence and anarchy? What thoughts you begin to think . . . when you become convinced that you, too, are nothing more than an instrument of hate?" She paused for the space of a breath, but held her own. The gentlest breeze could throw the entire delicate balance she'd built up for herself out of whack, send her careening over the edge, and destroy everything she was working towards. "Do you know what that all feels like?"

The words drained Blake like speaking a sacrificial spell, all the warmth and life within her disappearing into nothingness, because she remembered _exactly_ what that felt like. It was the dawning realization of a lesson learned a thousand times before, that outside Blake's head there was a world that was cruel for cruelty's sake and uncaring of what smaller creatures it stepped on, and she was just as much a part of it as anything else. She'd never make it out there. She was too kind. For a moment she believed she hadn't prepared herself properly, that at any second she'd break down into nothing – and then.

And then.

And then there was Yang.

And then there was Yang, like a comic book hero, to catch her before she fell, to draw her in closer and whisper that the day was saved. There was Yang, to remind Blake that gentle smiles and optimism might yet win the day, and that kindness was not ever to be considered the same as weakness. Fingers atop Blake's head and gentle humming were what had started this whole mess, and they seemed to be what Yang intended to get her out of it with. Bless her. "I bet it feels like dying."

Blake leaned her head back into Yang's palm, if only to brace herself for the next sentence. "It feels worse. It feels like wanting to die."

Blake didn't truly notice the gentle pressure Yang put behind her fingers until it was gone, and she hesitated to think of an idiom to match the situation lest it hit altogether too close to home. "I'm sorry," she repeated the words, like once wasn't already too much.

The smile rose from something that had burned within Blake long ago. "You of all people have nothing to apologize for. I've made my own peace with that – I'm trying to move on. I want to live. And, Yang . . ." At last, she breathed in, and marveled at how her lungs and heart alike filled with the motion. "I never feel more alive than when you touch me."

Blake Belladonna was one of perhaps three people on the face of Remnant who could claim the dubious honor of having struck Yang Xiao Long speechless.

Blake would fill the gap, she swore, with every good thing Yang had ever done. "When everyone around you is telling you, day after day, that you're nothing more to people than a monster under the bed, you start to believe them. Especially when 'monstrous things' are practically the calling card of the organization you belong to." She shook with the effort of memory, and with the realization of where the future was going. "But you're, in some ways, my reassurance. Sometimes, deep down, I start to believe I might just be some other horror hiding in the woods, waiting to prey on a world of light and goodness that was never built for me. Then you're there. You're holding me close, so close in your heart and with your hands that I think surely, if I were as horrible a beast as everyone else believed, you would never . . ."

Her voice, at last, failed her. She'd never been much of a talker. And evidently, Yang's voice was still failing her, too. The silence in the room stung like a wall of needles, not quite piercing the skin, making movement impossible.

Impossible for her. But for Yang, the impossible was only a suggestion of what not to do.

She moved like honey, a nourishing, golden glide of sappy situations, sweetness, and light. Her arms encircled Blake like an answered prayer, and miraculously, unprecedented, Blake was met with the wild idea that someone might accept her for who she was, ears, claws, and human failings all.

It happened every time. Every time Yang touched her. Any idea that it didn't had only always been playing pretend.

Blake had fought that feeling like some people fight the lifeguard who comes to rescue their drowning selves, but here and now the realization of what she had been doing struck her like Yang's eyes, about to shed tears, and she let her head lay on Yang's shoulder. An exhalation like the world drawing to a close, and inhale like the next chapter.

"'Course you're not a monster, Blake." Yang could light any darkened woods, tame any savage beast, baffle any process of thought, but she wasn't in the practice of lying. That made Blake's heart not race, not skip, but still its anxious beat. And listen. "Monsters don't hug people back."

Blake had started hugging Yang too, hadn't she? She hadn't even realized. Maybe that was just further proof. "I guess I'm the one who should be saying sorry."

"If you have to apologize for that, we're all pretty much irredeemable." Blake felt Yang's smile against her skin, like an endorphin donation.

"No, I mean . . ." All Blake's cleverness must have been used up on witty comebacks and innuendos, the way she wasn't speaking now. "I wanted to say something entirely different than all that, but it all got mixed up between my brain and my mouth somewhere." She drew back once more; as nice as Yang felt against her, talking directly into someone's shoulder blade wasn't exactly conducive to communicating heart to heart. "Sorry."

"Nah, it's okay. That's just how people work – they get to talking and everything just starts falling out." Yang chuckled, stopping herself halfway through, and Blake nearly had to bite her tongue to keep from asking her to do it again. Her own or Yang's? Either. "Unless, you know, you've been practicing for weeks in advance to make sure you don't screw everything up when you finally start making your grandiose speech."

Forget either of their tongues, for Blake had advanced to biting down her own lip to keep the laughter from spilling out. Nothing was funny – everything was funny. Something like that. "And then the person you're talking to can't stop themselves from saying every tiny thing that comes to mind because they can't handle how serious the conversation is becoming?"

Yang could do sarcasm just fine. Where Blake indicated it with her tone of voice, Yang used a sincere tone and conveyed her intentions with body language. "Well, you know, sometimes things happen that are entirely out of our control, Blake."

"Like the way your hand keeps wandering up to run through my hair?" Blake flicked her upper-left ear against Yang's index finger and decided to pretend she had meant to do so.

Yang's eyes widened, overfilled like a flooding pool of lilacs and water, and suddenly Blake remembered unshed tears. "Oh, sorry, I thought – your hair's really – I can stop, if you -"

"No, it's okay. More than okay." Blake took in as deep a breath as she could, as though her vocal cords were operated by air pressure alone. "In fact, it's about the only thing keeping me from having a breakdown right now. If I'm being honest."

If fire could consider something carefully, it might look a bit like Yang did at that moment – feel a bit like her palm against the top of Blake's head. "Alright, I gotcha." A smile to stoke the flames. "Set fingers to fun."

Blake was tempted to say that sort of thing was supposed to happen later in the evening, but . . . "I had more I wanted to say." It was as much a reminder for herself as it was for Yang. "Think you can give me one more shot?" It was as much a request for herself as it was for Yang.

"I'm dying to hear what else you've got to tell me." Yang was going to kill Blake too, at this rate. Her gravestone would read "Warmed to bursting by the twinkle in Yang's eye."

"Alright. I'll make my first entreaty to hold on to life just a little longer, then." Blake's eyes fell more than looked over Yang's entire form, and she wasn't sure herself whether she'd slipped up or dropped into her proper place in the world. "And as for the other . . . could you . . . maybe? . . ."

If Blake was going to be forgetting her lines, Yang might as well move ahead in the script. With slow, deliberate movements like a metaphor Blake might think of when her heart wasn't pounding so loudly as to drown out her own thoughts, Yang brought her other hand down the length of Blake's back before wrapping an entire arm, crafted like a piston but cushioned with pillows, around her waist. The otherwise occupied hand atop her head splayed across the back of her mind, and with little more than a nudge Blake felt herself be drawn nearly into Yang's lap.

It wasn't being a perfect ninja that Blake had always dreamed about with the last part of her imagination protecting her childhood. She dreamed of being a pirate, of being someplace unjudged by laws, man, or nature, of wooden ships and treasure chests and adventures without concern. Perhaps it was quite silly to think of something this intimate in those childlike terms, but Yang felt for all the world, lying against her as she was, like clear skies, warm weather, and the open sea.

"Mmm." It was the third law of motion more than any conscious choice on Blake's part as her arms wrapped, fit, around Yang's neck, like lock and key to the chains that had been anchoring Blake in place. Freedom; that was the crux of it, the crossroads of it, the kisses and hugs or Xs and Os of it. "Thank you."

"No problem." It was odd, the way a statement of magnanimity could sound so much like a statement of gratitude. At least, the way Yang had just said it. "Now that I've done that, what was that second thing you were going to ask me to do?"

"For you to stop being insufferably smug for three seconds." Forget the claws, no matter how quick; this situation necessitated a whip. Bad Yang.

Bad Yang, as Bad Yang usually did, chortled with all her strength. "Aw, come on. You love the smug hug."

"I believe we had established that I was the poet here?" It was the testing toe in the warm bath after a day spent shoveling snow. "I hadn't taken you as a plagiarist."

"I've got a reputation to protect as a non-dork. I can't be seen writing trochees or whatever." And there they were, the jets in the hot tub. Or maybe something to do with friction and silken sheets would be the better turn of phrase. The thing to note was, the agitation was more about warmth and comfort than anything else.

"I can honestly say that amongst the people I call my friends with blond hair and D-cups, you are the least dorky one." Blake pulled over to let Yang's laughter pass by. Pass _through_. Pass through her by route of the places she and Yang's bodies touched with a feeling like a strawberry sundae tastes. "Despite the possibility of driving this conversation into a rut . . . thank you, Yang. Really."

"You're welcome." There were millions of minuscule muscle movements attached to one of Yang's smiles, even one as small as this one. In that moment, Blake decided she was going to put a good deal of effort into memorizing each and every one of them. "You sure you wanna keep going? We can stop for now if that's what you want. Upsetting you was so low on my list of things to do today, I actually had to move it over to my list of 'things I never want to actually do'."

"I'm sure. You need to hear this, and I need to say it." Blake only realized after she'd inhaled the scent of wildflowers that she'd moved in closer, laying her head down on Yang's shoulder. She looked up to Yang's face and told herself it was an apology instead of an attempt to draw even closer than she already was. "I think I'll have to do the rest of this from down here, though. I'm very tired, all of a sudden."

"That's . . . not going to be a problem." Yang feigned calm in much the same way, Blake suspected, as she might feign cowardice. Without the slightest hint of insincerity, save that she would never do such a thing in her entire life. "In fact, that's going to be the _opposite_ of a problem."

"Good to hear." Feel, really. The acoustics were so extraordinary from this position that Blake felt she could reach out and touch them. Touch _something_ , certainly. Some work of art with a "do not touch" sign attached to it, metaphorically speaking. "Hopefully your muscles don't overly muffle me."

Yang's arms tightened, and she settled back – like she was riding her motorcycle, even if that meant Blake was the vehicle in this situation. Hopefully there had been enough hairpin turns and death-defying stunts for one evening. "Reading you loud and clear, good buddy."

Blake held on for the ride, and watched her thoughts as they raced by, a blur of possibilites. "People give the _Ninja_ books and its spinoffs a lot of flak, but they've always been one of my guilty pleasures." One slowed down to wave, and Blake figured, why not wave back. Maybe she could ask directions. "To quote someone I'm very fond of, I'm going somewhere with this, I promise."

"This someone sounds like an extremely wizened and radiant young woman." Yang's Glynda Goodwitch impression fit her to a T – which, considering her initials were "GG", meant Yang was extremely off the mark. "I'll allow it."

Speaking of guilty pleasures. Rolled eyes and widened smiles weren't typically considered to be matching accouterments, but Blake had always felt that a slight twinge of her ears neatly completed the ensemble. "I found something in _Ninjas_ that was lacking in other books, and believe it or not, I don't mean the gratuitous sex scenes." It was like a stalactite looming just over her head, doing nothing else, the way she felt Yang distinctly not say anything in response to that. "The dialogue is often clunky, and they tend to meander, but I always appreciated their vivid and descriptive use of metaphor. Nearly every other book I've read does nothing but fall back on age-old aphorisms like 'familiarity breeds contempt' or 'absence makes the heart grow fonder'." It was a breath of air – it might have been a sigh, but it might have been a laugh. Whatever it was, it was entirely beyond Blake's reckoning. "I can tell you from personal experience that all those expressions are one hundred percent untrue."

"You're still talking about the White Fang, aren't you?" Yang's voice belied astonishment that wasn't actually there, like someone who had gotten an invitation to their own surprise party. "Them and their tired old aphor-whatsit of 'kill all the humans!'"

Blake giggled, because to do otherwise would have been to refuse hot cocoa after falling down an iceberg. "The only good man is a dead man," she boomed her recollection of their rallying cry, but soft, like explosions a considerable distance away. Sometimes the distance was all that made the noise bearable. "And then, I guess, their plan was for the lesbians to inherit Remnant."

Another wave of laughter like a sugar high, like comfort food. Yang was a bakery made manifest. "Blake, you're absolutely wonderful. If anyone ever tells you any differently, come find me, and I'll knock their lights out. They obviously weren't very enlightened anyway."

There was a dearth of thoughts worth smiling over out there – but that was one of them. "That's exactly what I mean, though. My absence from the White Fang wasn't anything to grow fond over. In retrospect, leaving them was the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Me too." Yang said it thoughtlessly. Not without care or consideration, not harmfully, not with selfish intent. Without thinking. Like she didn't even have to.

Blake ducked her head, smiled into Yang's shoulder, and tried to hold her tongue – if only she could stop wondering whether Yang tasted as sweet as she acted. Like a bakery made manifest. "The way you talk, I'm starting to wonder if you keep a shrine to me hidden under our bunk bed."

"Blake, you _are_ my shrine." Yang's enunciation could damn an angel and, possibly, save Blake's soul. "What time do you open up for worship?"

Blake wasn't quite sure what piece of her was still resisting, but it wasn't working. Not the way Yang could beat down doors and break windows and let the sunlight in. "Still trying to cheer me up?"

"Whatever keeps the gloom away." Yang blew words like bubbles, iridescent and carefree. Ready to pop at any moment. She deserved so better than to be speaking hollow words.

Blake bit her lip nearly hard enough to make it bleed, and oh, to have Yang's lip intercept the blow. There was, after all, still a part of Blake, perhaps feline in nature, more likely human, that believed there was an art to violence. There was a subtlety and grace to any knife, and a dance of expression and interpretation unique to its wielder. But most importantly, she reminded herself as she slowly moved upright to look into Yang's crystalline orbs, there was a craft involved.

Playing ninja.

She didn't need to think about what she wanted to say anymore.

"At first, leaving the White Fang was just like leaving home, if home was a place that used the word 'traitor' and was known to cook with poisons. It was like tearing hooks out of myself and watching the pieces I left behind rot away, a stinking reminder of how I hurt others and hurt myself. After some time passed, I looked within myself and looked to other people, and in those places I found my missing pieces. I began healing. And absence did end up making my heart grow fonder, but not of the White Fang. The longer I stay away from them, the easier it is to keep staying away from them, like the opposite of an addiction." The smile Blake wore upon her face would be her killing blow. "Like the opposite of you."

Yang even blinked in bewilderment beautifully. It would be enough to make Blake envious if it wasn't enough to make her dizzy. "Okay, I'll admit it. You caught me off guard with than one." She smiled like a landmark, something to slow down and appreciate even if you weren't in the business of getting directions. "I know I'm pretty radical and all, but how exactly am I habit-forming?"

Being caught daydreaming in classes where she already knew all the answers was good practice for this moment, Blake surmised. "Around you, I take regular hits of the chemicals 'endorphin' and 'dopamine', both known to be brain-altering and addictive in nature." She dropped the academic act with as much efficiency and debaucherous intent as a night out clubbing. "You're both a bigger rush and a sweeter taste than chocolate, I'm willing to bet."

Yang smiled like an improvised weapon, as though her real smile were just somewhere out of reach. Perhaps she'd been exaggerating before – between that and the short little intake of breath, surely this was what catching her off guard actually looked like. "Says the world's . . . swirliest . . . piece of marble cake. With chocolate frosting!"

"And you believed I got my best lines from reading books." Blake moved her hand to Yang's cheek and began a slow circle, watching with fascination as Yang's eyes slowly sank shut. "But the best part of me has always come from being with you, Yang. Every quip, every move in battle, every good night's sleep and scratch behind the ears." She rubbed her nose against Yang's own, if only because it was just about the only way she could stop herself from doing something requiring much more commitment. "Every piece of me I left behind in the bloodshed, you found, picked up, and asked me if it was mine. You put me back together again. The new and improved Blake Belladonna."

Yang opened her eyes and looked around just the slightest bit. Like a sleeper slowly awakening, and then realizing with a start that they were still someplace they'd always dreamed of. "You really mean it." She didn't ask, but stated, with a voice shaking to match the hand she brought to Blake's cheek. "Aw, Blake. How could I not?"

"It isn't just that, though." Blake treated the touch as a treasure, hording it for herself with a palm as gentle as she could manage atop Yang's own. She'd avoid kissing the wrist this time, though. For now. "When I came to Beacon, I was emptied out completely. Everything was new and unfamiliar, and I tried to find anything I could to latch onto that might be like a reminiscence or a new start, or anything at all besides just . . . gloom. I was so certain I was going to spend the rest of my life lonely, but you refused to let that happen to me. Never would have guessed that gloom spelled backwards was pronounced 'Yang', and yet . . ." A squeeze, a brush of one body against the other like jigsaw pieces testing their fit. "Here we are."

"We're practically familiar territory at this point, huh?" For a few moments, Yang only stared, as if inspecting Blake for defects. No, not defects – clues. Blake was so used to thinking of them as the same thing. Not the holes, but the pieces that fit into them, the promise that they'd work out this puzzle together. "You know. If only because we keep exploring."

"Honestly, I never want to stop." There was so much uncharted territory, because Yang was more than a world. She was a book. Could memorize every sentence and find something new when reading again. "Familiarity and contempt are as far apart as East and West, when it comes to you. And you were the only thing in Beacon that was _ever_ close to familiar. You and your smart mouth." A smart mouth, a brilliant smile, and a tongue clever enough to match her own. That kind of mouth could swallow up all of Blake's fears with a single predator's smile. Including her fear of saying too much. "With a smart brain, to match."

"Getting familiar with _you_ was the smartest thing I ever did." There was an offer, many years ago by Blake's reckoning, to go out for milkshakes. Yang's voice was sweeter and thicker than the most scrumptious vanilla treat. "Although to be honest, 'familiar' is starting to sound like it's not a word at this point."

"It still sounds perfect to me." Blake drew a finger in a spiraling shape – she'd draw how her thoughts were drawn by Yang, further in, collapsing on themselves, a wild rush to a perfectly calm center, and then depth. "Then again, most every word sounds perfect coming from your mouth."

"Well . . ." Color rose, rubies in Yang's cheeks, and possibly it was a sign for Blake to try strawberry shakes the next time she went out. Two straws, even. "I think every part of you is absolutely _purr_ -fect."

"How long have you been saving up that line for?" Blake could bank on Yang being there to make puns. Even if the rest of the world crashed and burned."

Yang's giggle was like a pattern of lights – they were playing a soft, slow song at the local disco. "You don't even know."

"Probably. But what I do know is how I feel around you." Blake _knew how she felt_ around Yang. It was a sensation that had yet to lose its novelty. "I feel like I'm safe. I feel like trying again. Around you, Yang . . . I feel like I'm at home."

The look on Yang's face was the look of someone who had unknowingly lived underground their entire lives, and then, upon hitting the surface, had been immediately struck by lightning. " . . . you mean that?"

"More than anything I've ever said." The dam had cracked open, and Blake stood just beneath it. The outpouring flowed overhead, rather than really from her. "I've always believed that home isn't a a place, or even a person, but an ideal worth fighting for. And as strange as it may sound, this back and forth between us feels more like home than anything the White Fang ever said was true. No matter how much bouncing we do off of one another at whatever speeds and angles, I always feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Right next to you." There was only one cliché left in the bag – and it was the most basic and truest of them all. "I take back what I said earlier about leaving the White Fang. _You're_ the greatest thing that ever happened to me."

Yang's expression looked, for as non-romantic as the concept was, as though she'd ordered a mild curry and bitten into the hottest pepper in the world. She'd always been capable of handling spice, but the surprise was a bit much. "So why didn't you ever say anything like that?"

"I'm scared, too, Yang. I'm scared of losing these silly conversations, of our games and contests, of moments like this. But most of all, I'm scared of losing the one thing that makes me feel like I might be worth something." It was a dark enough future that even acknowledging the chance seemed to dim the world. Only Yang still seemed bright. "I've always been taught – by experience - that nothing lasts forever. As much as I don't want to believe that, I'm terrified of that possibility." Something in her voice cracked – which was good, because Blake was finding she needed something to breathe through. "I've already lost everything once."

"The memory clogs you up, doesn't it?" The words sounded like Yang had to dig them up from somewhere, all heavy and covered with grime. "Like some kind of gunk in the back of your head. Your heart starts beating faster like it's trying to pump it out, but then all that happens is that you . . . choke on it."

That was what partners were for, Blake supposed. Helping take the weight of immeasurable darkness off of your back through combined strength and understanding. "When everything in your world can become a living nightmare with only the smallest change, you do everything you can to make sure nothing changes outside your control. The games we play are fun, and I don't want to lose them either, but . . . I was scared of what they were becoming, I think. Something more than a game, something that I couldn't quite comprehend." And then, upon the three hundredth swing of the pickaxe, Blake hit something valuable – worth her time. Yang was _still there_ , she realized. Even now. "Actually, I _know_ we were still playing a game, but I misunderstood its stakes. I didn't stop to think about what I was actually doing, how it affected me, how it affected you, or most importantly, why you were going along with it at all."

Yang's grip around Blake's waist tightened briefly, before slackening again. Blake was sure it was a metaphor for her thoughts. "Yeah, but . . . why would you, you know?"

"Because you're important to me, and you deserve more than compliments – you deserve consideration." She deserved a castle and a litany of loyal subjects, but Yang's potentially royal heritage wasn't at all related to the present – or peasant – matter. "And I didn't think. I didn't think about your feelings at all. What I thought was that I was playing your libido, not your emotions. No one should ever have their feelings treated like a game piece. Even like a cute little pony."

"Heh. Such a good thief you didn't even realize you stole my heart, huh?" Yang could steal things, too – the words right out of Blake's mouth, for one thing.

"Maybe you could look at it that way. But I'm trying to move past my past, and put my general tendencies towards skulduggery behind me. Some things are too precious to simply say 'oops' and return, no harm done." Blake's brow rose like a hand in class. After a teacher asked who was responsible for defacing the picture of the Headmaster in the hallways. "And I think matters of your heart are slightly more serious than accidentally swiping a pen at the bank."

Yang dipped her head like she was ducking the thought, but the look on her face made it seem like she was just catching it underhanded."Yeah, but I can see how you'd make that mistake. Pens and your heart are like peas in a pod."

Blake reran that sentence through her thoughts a second time. It didn't make any more sense to her. If anything, it made less. "Really? This should be interesting. How so?"

"They're both tiny, focused on written works, and black as coal." Yang blazed brilliance and everything burned to ashes – if only it were real, and not just special effects. Excellent scripting, admittedly.

"Everything I've done for you, and this is the thanks I get." Blake could have made her voice more monotonic than she already did. She also could have jumped up and acted convincingly offended enough to make Yang think she'd taken what she said seriously. Neither of them seemed like worthwhile uses of her time.

" . . . also, I was pretty sure they both belonged to someone else besides me." Yang and the word "dejected" went together like the beach and heavy rainstorms, and yet there it was. Muddy sand and water in the air, a day-long vacation gone wrong.

"Someone else?" It was like looking away from a movie at the climax to check one's phone for routine texts, but Blake searched her memory. Or at least the parts of it that didn't involve aiding a clandestine organization with their rebellion, which left comparatively little scrolling through her contacts to do. "Oh. Of course." Might as well give this one to Yang, then: her name in Blake's contacts may have been "Goldy-rock-your-face" but there was, after all, a little heart next to it. "I know you believe everything in the world revolves around puns as opposed to the sun, but Sun isn't actually _my_ only sunshine."

"I know for a fact puns make the world go 'round; you just have to keep your eyes open for them." Yang gulped, obviously still nervous. The stars, astonishingly, did not fall from their places in the heavens, and the whole of Remnant remained unflooded. "And uh, I . . . I'm starting to wonder if maybe your heart belongs to someone else besides him, anyways."

The butterflies were back from their southward migration, it seemed. Blake hadn't noticed before, but things did indeed seem to be heating up again. "Pens and puns. Maybe your heart's simpler than I thought it was."

"It's only ever wanted one thing." Yang got that look on her face, sometimes. Blake had last seen it when the girl with boundless optimism was attempting to fold one thousand paper cranes. The time before, when she was buying a teddy bear for her little sister. Sometimes, Blake wondered if maybe the world felt like it was made of glass, to someone with superhuman strength. Potentially sharp if you treated it too roughly. "Just took me a while to realize what that was."

She could turn Blake's perception of the world upside down with a single sentence. It would take Blake an entire poem to say the same thing. In fact. "You know, your heart and an ink pen are pretty similar, too."

"How's that?" Two words. Angel-esque visage. Two more.

Blake allowed the answer to dangle for a moment, like a little red laser dot in a library. Lasers didn't typically dangle, of course, but the mind worked strongly enough in idioms that they became a bit literal, sometimes. Like every word from Yang's mouth seemed like a message from Heaven. "They both make it a lot easier to write poetry." As evidenced.

Yang seemed taken aback, which meant less that she had nothing to say and more that she needed a good running start to get out to the front again. "You mean like haikus?"

"Haikus, sonnets, limericks, freeform verse . . ." Blake gave Yang a look that, previous to meeting her, had only been reserved for constellations and fictional characters. "I'd call you my muse, but muses are fleeting, and you have this habit of sticking around." A shrug, not to say she didn't care, but to say she didn't care that she did care, which was such a new sensation to her she felt she'd have to commit crimes against literature if body language hadn't had certain untranslatable expressions. "You show off by striking pose, I show off by writing prose – and I think we have the same goals in mind. Either way, words just fall out of my mouth around you."

"I haven't caught any of them." Yang said, with a grin on her face that seemed to signify one of the pastries she'd just handed you had been licked.

It took a second for the pun to hit Blake, but it was worth it. "Well, I never said where they landed. Tell me: I used to belong to an underground rebellion of troublemakers whose very survival hinged on their ability to keep secrets. Do you think, if I really cared about it, you guys would know about my reading _Ninjas of Love_?"

"Eh? Well . . ." Yang had a habit of pulling the corner of her mouth with her finger when she really thought about something. Besides being adorable, it made Blake think about other things that lip could be doing. "We'd probably have turned up something eventually. But . . . no." She paused, like the end of a move in Dust and Dragons where she realized she could play another card in her hand at no penalty to herself. "Not fast, anyway."

"Yang, I'm about to tell you a secret that I've never told anybody else." Well, two of them. But one had a tinge of immediacy to it, and the other a slathering of inevitability. The inevitable could be held off a little longer.

"O- _ho_." Yang was many things, but she wasn't a gossip by nature. She'd worked hard at picking up the trade. "Sounds juicy."

"Positively overflowing with the liquids of impropriety." It wasn't Blake's best idiom, but everything else she could think of involved come-ons, mostly revolving around the word 'juicy'. "I do genuinely enjoy reading Ninjas of Love, but I don't really _care_ if people know that about me. What I really care about getting into the wrong hands . . . is my diary."

"It's not even hidden, is it?" Yang got outraged like a volcano got outraged. She didn't. Not really, despite all appearances otherwise. But then again, volcanoes didn't _pretend_ to get outraged, either. "You just knew if you pretended to hide the Ninja stuff we wouldn't go looking for it! I bet it's chock-full of all your dirty little secrets, too!"

"Absolutely. And it would be a disaster if anyone got hold of my thoughts. My journals are my friend who keeps the secrets I cannot tell anyone else." The words were truthful, but that was no reason for Blake not to treat them with impropriety. In fact, it was all the more reason to do so. "My past, my identity as a faunus . . . my sordid fantasies."

"And what you think about me." Yang didn't even inquire as to what sort of naughty daydreams she had. It may not have been a common occurrence, but she could be just as distracted as Blake by too-rational thoughts, a raindrop leaving its downwards drop for the slower, more interesting patterns in the leaves it encountered. " . . . poetry. You wrote poetry?"

"I know." Shock. Scandal. Riots in the streets. Cat faunuses and heiresses of the Schnee company living together. Mass hysteria. "Not only am I a huge dweeb, but now you've got physical evidence of it as well. My reputation as a non-dork is completely shot."

Yang tried to hold back her laughter, though Blake wasn't sure exactly why. Maybe for the same reasons she did. Either way, it didn't last for long, and the chuckles seeped out sweet and thick, like sap. "You're not serious. There's no way."

"What's wrong with self-expression?" Plant a seed and wait a season, and then watch the time-lapse, and Blake's sentence might be comparable, the way it started off amused and nearly grew into something similar to genuine reproach. The shape of the tree, though – the target of her recriminations – that was less capturable on anything as simple as film.

"Nothing, nothing. Really. It's just . . ." The last few chuckles leaked, knock on wood, and Yang proved her skull a wooden one with a light tap on her head. "For a second, I thought you were writing poetry about _me_ , or something. That's just ridiculous."

"Oh, Yang." Autumn came. The leaves fell from the tree of rebuke, and Blake lay her hand – upside-down, against gravity's wishes, but lay nonetheless – to cup Yang's chin. "What on Remnant could be wrong with you?"

". . . really?" Yang sounded like a young girl who had never heard of Aura or Semblances, trying to fight against hope with the idea of magic tricks. "Me?"

Blake nodded. She had to let go of Yang's chin to do so, lest she unconsciously make Yang nod too, which would have done quite a good job of ruining the effect. "Of course."

There was a moment where a sword, knocked from a hand, might hold itself suspended in the air, before, inevitably, it would come spinning downwards to land, in accordance with dramatic tension, hilt-first in a living hand or blade-first in a dead body. Yang seemed to be experiencing one of those moments. Completely silent.

"Why?" The sword fell. It landed flat-first, on her head, which just went to show.

"You vibrate at a certain frequency." Blake moved quickly, before any jokes involving the word vibrating could be made. But hopefully not before they were thought up. Word choice wasn't always a complete accident. "It makes the strings up in my mind . . . twang, if you'll excuse the brief foray into country music." Blake shrugged, because sometimes the word choice was a complete accident, and there wasn't anything she could do about it. "I can't help it, I guess you could say."

"Could I hear some of what you wrote?" Yang usually asked for things like it was Spook's Evening, an enthusiasm to be met with an obligate response. Here and now, though, she seemed afraid of being tricked instead of treated. "If you're okay with telling me, that is."

"I wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise. Let's see . . ." Trying to find the right poem wasn't like trying to find a needle in a haystack. It wasn't even like trying to find a needle in a needlestack. It was like trying to find a specific page in a library where every book was dedicated to the exact same subject. With a time limit. "It's not very a good, but I did pen a sonnet. You up for that level of commitment?"

Yang's grin landed askance on the framework of the world, and something shook. "I'm down for anything, so I guess that means I'm up for anything too."

There was a breath of time in which actors breathed, just before they entered the stage, and not much else happened. Stage fright, it was called, and like most things with a name there was a procedure to fight it. Determination meeting nervousness could take on many shapes and rituals – deep breaths, brief chants, a quick prayer or quicker run of lines, everything rational, irrational, but always comforting. There were many ways for any actor or actress to make sure they gave a good performance despite the icy lance of fear stabbing into their heart. Every one was unique.

Blake didn't know what hers would be, but if this moment were any indication, it would involve twitching her cattish ears repeatedly. "Okay." Twitch, twitch. "Okay, then." Followed by a deep breath, and she stepped out onto stage . . .

" _From shadows I'm revealed, my deeds all done_

_In name of nameless fury, and of hate._

_But home's not where the hate is, little sun._

_You, Beacon's light, led me from dark estates._

_My mind, beset by terrors of the night,_

_Saw fears vanish like dewdrops in the morn._

_The sunrise comes, the nightmares flee from light,_

_A new day for the lovers left forlorn._

_A world so cold it freezes every heart,_

_And yet she is not gelid; no, she burns._

_I cannot capture with this artless art_

_How truly my frostbitten being yearns_

_For light and warmth, a moment in the sun._

_Yang Xiao Long, I say her name, and done."_

Opening nights, fickle things that they were, tended to lean towards either uproarious applause and the thrill of victory, or else thrown tomatoes, in which case there was at least something to eat that evening. Here, however, there were no accolades or plant grenades to accept. Only a silence that practically roared, an extremely loud quiet.

But one must consider one's audience. And Blake had never known Yang Xiao Long to be stunned out of commenting on a work before. Somehow, that idea seemed worth the approval of the entire world.

"You really mean all that." Yang seemed uncertain, but not questioning. Uncertain about whether or not to be questioning, perhaps.

Blake looked at her for a while. Looked at her, hair rich and golden as a treasury and twice protected, cheeks like pearls chiseled into a mouth like a gateway. Looked at eyes like waking up in the middle of the night, feeling oddly refreshed. Looked at arms like safety nets to catch Blake after her neckline's plunge. Looked at legs like rock formations worn smooth, the raw force of nature given polish and restraint. Looked at abdominal muscles like complicated machinery, at shoulderblades like simple pulleys, and marveled at the precise nature of proper mechanical wizardry. Looked at Yang. " . . . I don't know why I bother writing it down." And looked away, because there was only so much spontaneous wordcraft Blake's brain could take before it convinced her to do something entirely untowards, which could very well take upwards of six hours to complete. "It all sticks in my head, just like you tend to. You amazing girl."

"No one's ever written poetry about me before." It was the truth, and it was whispered. It was almost as if speaking too loudly would make reality hear, realize it was in the wrong, and adjust.

Blake smiled, a soft dip she hoped would be as subtly seductive and affirming as an impression in a bed from where a lover had slept the previous evening. "I cannot fathom why. You make it frighteningly easy."

" . . . Blake." Yang wasn't always the explosion. Wasn't always the dynamic movement with the shotgun blast and flex of bicep at the end. Sometimes, like now, she was waiting on – begging for – the proper trigger. "Do you . . . you're not playing around with me, are you? Do you really mean that you . . .?"

There it was. The edge of a cliff, and elementary physics. No turning back.

Once more, steeling herself against the sights she knew were to be coming, Blake looked into Yang's eyes, and found herself entirely unknowledgeable and unprepared. Across a gap a couple inches long and a few million light years too wide Blake looked deep into violet eyes, and gathered from the latticework beneath the petals the very workings of the universe. There was a revelation there, one she sensed Yang was sharing with her, and the end of a millisecond's musings Blake caught a glimpse of eternity.

And believed that she, too, might be a part of it.

Impossible was only a suggestion with Yang around, Blake reminded herself. She made up her mind, and it was just as Yang described. All the words just started falling out.

"I grew up in a world of hate. A world that hates people like me, and a household that hates the ones that hate us. My family, for lack of a better term, didn't hate each other, but we hated _together_ , and the hate was more important to us than anything else. More important than who they were, who we were, than what tomorrow might be. Hate was all I ever knew, all that filled my soul." The memories were like a wave and Yang was like a surfboard, and Blake didn't care how awkward or screamingly bad that sounded just so long as she didn't drown. "And then I came to Beacon. And there you were. And you gave me, and you give me, nothing but love." A tear down her cheek. She was leaking. She'd spent so much time trying to plug those holes, and it was a smile that cracked her wide open in the end. "What kind of person would I be if I did not give you the same in return?"

"You really . . .?" The shaking sob split Yang's expression like an atom, with just as explosive a fallout. Yang had promised she wouldn't cry until it was all over, and here and now she made good upon her word. "You actually – I didn't, I didn't actually think, I couldn't – I know that's what you've been heading for all this time, but I just, I just couldn't _believe_ that -"

"Please, do believe." Blake said, looking for wisdom in their pool of shared tears. "Believe _me_. You're special, Yang. So . . . beautiful, you transcend even yourself, like a galaxy bursting from a single star." She smiled, like a petal, fallen, but still alive, and somewhere nearby, there were flowers. "I don't write sonnets and haikus for just anybody I meet, after all."

Yang made a noise – not a sob, or a laugh, not even something like both or like the child of both, but something caught between the two attempting to combine into a singular auditory sensation. "No Ballad of Ruby Rose planned for anytime in the future?"

"Not even the Song of the Schnee." Then again, if there were any way for Blake to definitively denounce her Fanged roots . . . no, now wasn't the time to be thinking of octaves and rhyme schemes. Even as a distraction.

"She'll be so disappointed. She always wanted a song written about her." Yang was probably talking about Ruby, not Weiss, and definitely not in any state where elaboration should be pressed. Other things, possibly, but not elaboration. "I, I still. Mm." She bit her lip and shook her head, the struggling signs of a drowning victim fighting against the lifeguard who came to rescue them. "I still can't wrap my head around it."

"I'm not going to say anything as cliched as, oh, 'you're the reason I get up in the morning'. But as long as we're talking about how we really feel?" A pause to let the question settle, like suds in the bathwater. Lavender, Blake thought. To match Yang's eyes. "Oftentimes, you're the reason I don't just go back to bed."

"Yeah. Be a shame to . . ." Yang's words . . . stopped. An unfinished painting. Just, nothing past a certain point. Not even an idea. Not even color. "So what happens now?" Except a whisper of white. "Where do we go from here?"

The answer seemed so obvious – plain as the look on Yang's face, teary but hopeful – that Blake half suspected a trap of some sort. "We're sort of doing things backwards, aren't we?"

"I always look at the last page of a book first." Yang trembled, a little. Not beneath the weight of the words, but beneath their sudden absence, Blake figured. The poor girl. "It's kind of a bad habit of mine."

"I think I can find it in the depths of my inky black heart to pardon your transgressions." Please. If mercy was worth its weight in gold, then Blake had a goldmine set aside for this girl who shone even brighter. "That is, if you can find it in your novel soul to forgive me for being . . . _ruthlessly_ forwards with you. Especially today."

If mercy was valued as gold, then laughter could only be platinum – and Yang had apparently found a deposit, somewhere deep beneath the teary waves. "Please. Like I wasn't practically groping you back there." A look on her face, like she'd just seen a shark, and comprehended the meaning of the cut on her foot. "Aaaaaaand I just realized how deep into it we got with each other, oh wow."

"It was me who started this whole thing." Feathers could fall on fields of spikes without significant harm to either party – it wouldn't be hard for Blake to treat the subject with some gentleness. "Too scared to do anything but let you make the first move, too enamored to wait for the game to start. All you did was, well, play along."

"Don't suppose you've ever heard of the phrase "do not escalate" before?" Yang's smile was shaky, but not unstable. Like a gelatin. Except the watery base was a tad saltier, and sadder. Or, happier. Something. Mm. "Pretty sure it was on the last quiz Goodwytch gave us."

"Nevertheless." Blake grasped one of Yang's hands in her own, less to feel her palm in her own, and more to give Yang something steadier to hold onto. But both were good. "Whether or not you're at fault, I know I am. And I should ask you, when it comes to this kind of thing. I should have _been_ asking. For this in particular, I know I need to, even though I'm relatively certain of the answer." This might be the moment that would break their world wide open. One hand cupped Yang's cheek while the other hand tightened around her own. Like trying to keep the planet held together. "Yang. Is it okay if I kiss you?"

Yang's gaze passed through Blake like lightning, and it was only the thought that she'd sparked the idea in the first place that kept her grounded. Then, she broke into beaming, and it was as though every cloud in the sky had disappeared at once. "Yes. Please."

Game, set, match – draw. Blake was only too happy to share the winner's cup. One pair of lips met each other after an eternity sending each other flirtatious emails, and Blake and Yang, finally, mercifully, mercilessly, kissed.

The books had said there'd be fireworks, and they were completely inadequate in their descriptions. This was beyond reason, beyond Dust, beyond Blake's biggest hopes and dreams. This was more than a transient burst of beauty and color, even a series of them; this was a constant, expanding heat bigger than anything Blake had ever known. There was a star, a _supernova,_ touching her lips, and Blake felt like unto a goddess to be able to taste it without burning. How long had Yang been keeping herself contained, superheated like plasma in a cold night sky, to let a feeling like this pass between them now, at their culmination?

The answer was as obvious to Blake now as the shape of Yang's lips. Too long. She'd been too slow to kiss all Yang's tears away. She'd remedy that now.

_She kisses even better than I dreamed she would._

After an eternity that was altogether too brief for Blake's liking, they separated, slowly, hesitantly, like a slow-motion capture of a drop of water clinging to an icicle. Their lips separated, at least – their bodies remained in close contact with each other, whispering assurances to each other with each inhale and exhale to do this again sometime very soon. And somewhere, Blake was certain, there were the proper words to say. Somewhere very far away from the look on Yang's face and the redness in her cheeks, which meant it was somewhere Blake didn't want to be right now. But still. There were words.

"Great googly moogly," Yang said, and oddly enough, those might have just been them. One last sniffle, like the straggler at the back of the bus, seemed to be all that was left of her earlier tears. "That was . . . something."

"Something incredible." Blake wasn't sure how she was saying anything without the assistance of her brain, but then again, perhaps tonight had been occupied with altogether too much in the way of thinking already.

Yang's smile broke through, and it was enough to make a lost soul adopt belief in fate and prophecy. Certainly, _something_ of cosmic import had just occurred. "Where, uh . . . ahem." She said, wiping away the last few tears before they managed to reach the ground. Close enough. "Where'd you learn to kiss like that?"

Blake ironed out her face, if only to see how this next line would (dead)pan out. "Reading. Lots of reading."

Yang laughed, clear as a sleigh bell ringing and twice as shiny bright. "I'm gonna have to check out those books some time."

The smile overtook Blake like the sunrise overtakes the twilight. No less peaceful, beautiful, or special – only a different shade of bliss and intimacy. "I can't imagine you have anything left to learn from literature." She licked her lips, whatever word it was to describe the _delicious_ aftertaste to Yang Xiao Long just at the tip of her tongue. "Was that . . . your first kiss, too?"

Yang's eyebrows, not having been used to waggle at any innuendo in the past half an hour or so, evidently got bored and decided to practice their magic act, disappearing somewhere in Yang's (brilliant, golden) hairline. "That was your first kiss?"

Blake shrugged, nonchalantly, paying no heed to how the action was counteracted by literally every other movement of her body at that point in time. Including her right hand, which had splintered off from the rest of Blake's organization and begun setting up territories along Yang's back. "Well, every time I met someone cute in the White Fang and found we had a lot in common, they'd start talking about how they planned to blow up a train or kidnap someone or take over the kingdoms and crush humanity beneath their heel. Things would kind of fall apart after that."

"Guess I'd better reschedule that heist I had planned for Friday, then." Yang constructed sentences like shelters, warm, safe, cozy and entirely unexpected in the life of a runaway like Blake. A place where people could laugh and mean it.

And laugh Blake did. At least, until there was a gentle tug at Blake's hips, and then she stopped to vocalize something different. With a noise like a drunken finger over the rim of a wineglass, she let Yang bring her in even closer. Not that she was certain how Yang managed to find _room_ to bring her closer – not that she was _complaining_. "Another heart stolen by the infamous Long gang?"

"Like you're stealing my lines?" Yang could give looks like aphrodisiacs, like romantic evenings over candlelit dinners, or worse yet, like the one she was giving now – looks like she thought the world of Blake. "And you go around calling me a plagiarist."

"Or stealing glances." Blake drew the tips of her claws across the back of Yang's neck, appreciating the wine red echo Yang met her ministrations with. A single note that could carry an entire lullaby. "It's hard to be original when you have eyes like an amethyst universe enveloping you."

"'I take back the 'dork' thing," Yang's voice was pitched like slow jazz in a smoky, private room. "It's actually really hot when you write poetry."

There were entire romantic sonnets written by some of the greatest poets who ever lived that Blake would pay less attention to than a single sentence like that from Yang Xiao Long. Sentences like that, especially spoken that close, were crashing lips and possessive marks just waiting to happen. Sentences like that . . . "Sentences like that make me want to write more poetry."

Yang beamed like the stars reaching down to touch the surface, and Blake realized belatedly that it wasn't only a clear blue sky, but the whole context of every sky she'd ever seen at the curl of Yang's lip, the crinkle of her eye. "You're poetry incarnate."

"You're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble, one of these days." Blake let her knuckles move like oils over the warmth at Yang's cheek, if only to watch the explosions left in their path.

"Thrillseeking's what I live for, Blake." Yang whispered, and the sudden drop left Blake dizzy, breathless, and not thinking entirely clearly. "So why don't you tell me what kind of trouble you had in mind?"

Blake knew then that she and Yang were one misstep, one clever tongue, one song and dance away from doing something entirely too hasty and entirely too overdue. She'd have to choose her words as carefully and lovingly as Yang was stroking her leg. "You never did answer my question about whether that was your first kiss, you know."

That . . . wasn't what Blake meant to say. That . . . was a trainwreck. That was a _disaster_. That was just like her.

"Huh? Oh!" Yang was too busy recovering her sense of direction to notice that Blake was attempting not to bury her face in her hands. At least, Blake hoped. "Well. Kind of."

It was like angrily slamming a door only to find it made a squeaking sound upon impact. "Kind of?"

"Kind of not." It would have been an infuriatingly vague answer if it wasn't, in all honesty, what a question like the one Blake had posed at that specific point in time deserved.

"I wasn't aware kisses were quantum; uncertain until observed." The mystery of Schrodinger's cat was solved: it could revive itself.

"Well, okay, if you want to be extremely literal about it, then I've been kissed a few times before. It's just . . ." Then Yang was leaning in close again, finger tilting up Blake's chin to make their eyes meet, smirking like checkmate, and somewhere in all of it Blake forgot how precisely to breathe. And _then_ Yang spoke _again_ , and the timbre of her voice put breath and life back in her. "It's just, after the way _you_ did it, I'm kind of wondering if any of that stuff even counts as kissing."

It was official. If Blake was ever in charge of choosing a disaster relief team, Yang Xiao Long would be relieving her of command immediately.

"Was . . . was I really that good?" Blake was too high on cloud 9 to be doing anything like grounding her thoughts.

Yang's eyes softened, heated, like gemstones melting into magma. "It wasn't so much your technique as you just being yourself. But yeah."

Blake's pulse pounded like fluttering eyelashes and sweet nothings, more speed than force, a reminder that she was yet alive. "I suppose I'll improve with experience."

"Here." Yang cradled Blake's face with both hands, and the rest of the world suddenly decided to give them some privacy. "Let me give you some pointers."

Yang kissed Blake – they didn't kiss each other. Blake kissed back, certainly, but it was like attempting to hug a wave. You couldn't hug more or harder than it could, even if you got an armful.

But this was more than a wave. It was an enveloping twist, a circle and stab, a calm desperation with no care for oxymoron. It was re-entry, hot, a roller coaster, wild, a cannon, unstoppable. It was all of what Yang Xiao Long was, concentrated into a singular point, transcending Blake's defenses, a divine revelation. It was all Blake could do to groan in response, to twine her arms with Yang and attempt to keep her from leaving too soon, to let her eyes fall shut and her ears droop to shut out anything that wasn't the girl she was kissing. It was a loss of control.

It was heaven.

It was, again, over far too soon.

Yang moved away like the perfect words forgotten between the bus stop and the writing desk, and Blake groaned at the injustice. How dare she do that. How dare she give Blake a sense of self-esteem, an idea that maybe she _deserved_ Yang, and then . . . and then _tease_ her like that, all sensuous curves and clever tongue and troublesome ideas. How dare she be the most beautiful thing on the planet, like an oasis, and the world was a desert. How dare she change Blake's life for the better and make promises about the future like she wasn't already overwhelmed with ecstatic fulfillment.

How dare she make Blake fall in love, forever.

But most of all, _**how dare she stop kissing Blake**_.

And as though clairvoyant, Yang smirked, eyes hooded, breath heavy, like every idle daydream Blake had ever chastised herself for having. "Think you've got the gist of it?"

"Yeah, okay. I think I get it. " Blake's next sentence was a painting. Not a masterpiece, but a necessity, a splatter of color when shape and form could not express the proper emotions. "You don't mind if I practice, do you?"

Then Yang was smiling against her lips, and everything was right with the world.

Well, almost everything. The only thing wrong was the niggling feeling at the back of Blake's brain – the part where she kept her psychosis, darkest fantasies, and collection of stray thoughts she'd never share with the world – that told her she could be doing better. Only thing to do about that was start pressing back.

Like Blake hadn't been doing so already for the last couple months.

And like the last couple months, she was met with nothing but filthy encouragement, hands like the most comfortable pair of magnets insisting on attempting to meet somewhere at the center resting on her hips and pulling forwards, because Yang was quick and delightful and knew what Blake wanted, and Blake rested her own hands like, she was sure, begging questions on Yang's shoulders, because she was intelligent and knew she needed a lot of leverage if she wanted to be doing something like moving the entire world, and they kissed with the intensity of an empty night sky burning with the sudden rush of heat and light that was the sunrise, and morning had come, and the mourning was over, and Blake felt so _alive_.

There were probably things out there that felt better than Yang's lips moving in concert with Blake's own, but Blake couldn't even begin to guess what they were. Something about the way Yang kept smiling against Blake's breath seemed to say that she would be finding out later tonight, though.

Yes. That sounded incredible.

They kept kissing, the sensation strong enough to knock Blake into next week. And next month. Next year. Three years from now, further, all the way into eternity. Blake felt it, the kiss, but she felt somewhere within her the echo of every kiss they might share. The tops of rollercoasters, wind in her hair, or replacing that wind with water, a kiss in the rain. Sunlit beaches for a background, or in front of their graduating class of Hunters and Huntresses, a photo for the local news and the yearbook and definitely the wide world of the net. Slow, sensual kisses existed in the same space, for just a moment, as quick teases at parties, as kisses hello and goodbye, as good lucks and aftershocks and all the moments in between. Every single kiss possible flashed at the forefront of Blake's mind.

And then Yang licked her lips, and all of a sudden, Blake was shoving all those memories out of the way so she could have some privacy, for once in her life, hello, yes, please, she opened her mouth and groaned like her hinges were creaking to do so, and, what else, returned the favor. Or retaliated. One of the two. Maybe both. Probably both.

Palms were pressing further into her skin, and Blake had never hoped for bruises before in her entire life.

Like two vines intertwining around each other were their tongues, the lines between cooperation and competition blurring and shifting at iceberg speeds of deceptively slow quickness as they each sought for dominance one moment and protection the next. Or perhaps they were like slightly misshapen gears, drawing out metallic moans of effort, shaping each other through sheer dint of force into the shapes they each needed to be. Or maybe they were like opposing armies, full of banners and passion, or a secret meeting giving coded messages to each other, or maybe like a billion different things clipping through Blake's mind at a speed she never imagined possible, like light given incentive, like the computational power given to the brain when letting an imaginary friend do some of the thinking, like an infinitely thin razorblade, a thought's edge, pressing into her where one tongue touched the other, and Blake reached out for more, more, _mor_ -

"Ow!"

It was a sentence like a bookmark, in that it signaled the stopping place, as well as a good one to continue, later on, when people weren't screaming for you in the metaphorical kitchen of life.

"I'm so sorry!" The connection was as instantaneous and clearheaded as one of her kisses with Yang wasn't, especially because one of her kisses with Yang was the problem in the first place. Which sounded like a ridiculous sentence – like saying too much tuna fish or too much money or too much _Yang in general_ was somehow a problem – and yet: "M-my tongue's rough, in some places, and, oh Dust, I _completely_ forgot to warn you about that!"

"Hey, it's fine." Some people had winsome smiles. Yang had a win-all smile. "I know you're used to moving your tongue quickly. Trust me, I really want to keep going." Yang put her finger up to her lips while she pouted, and her cheerfulness put on a nun's habit in order to disguise itself. "Just be more gentle with me, ok?"

"I'll show you 'gentle'." It was a tone like untying a black ribbon, revealing a secretly bestial feature. Or, at least, that was what Blake was going for.

"I was _really_ hoping you'd say that." Yang's eyes hooded in such a way as to make Blake wish that hood was the only thing she was wearing. "No, but seriously, maybe ease off the throttle a bit? I know that sounds sort of out of character for me to say, but I'm pretty sure that a profusely bleeding anything is not conducive to . . . whatever it is we're going for here tonight."

"Absolutely." Blake tried to wrap her head around the idea of "whatever it is", but she kept imagining Yang's thighs being wrapped around her head instead. That was a picture with staying power. "Besides, hurting you is the last thing I ever want to do."

"Huh. Here I figured you'd be all about the kinky stuff." The gleam in Yang's eyes almost lit her up well enough for Blake to see the thoughts behind them. Vaguely shaped like noisemakers and party favors.

"I think we can safely save whips, chains, and dressing up in ways society as a whole would probably frown upon for some other dark and not-so-lonesome night." Blake twisted the words on her tongue, like tying a knot in a cherry stem. And on that note. "For now . . . let me try that again."

"Anytime." Yang's tongue could tie knots in cherries, too. Yang's tongue could probably tie knots in cherry soda.

Soda fizzed, of course, but this time Blake didn't let the carbonation go to her head. This kiss was a test of the emergency liplock system, not a ravenous exercise in seeing who said "ow" first. In point of fact, this kiss, slow tongue probing centimeter by centimeter into Yang's open mouth like it was exploring a cave, was specifically designed to avoid that word by any means necessary.

Even restraint, the most hated means of all.

"Not too rough still, is it?" Blake's voice was full of concern, yes, but it was more like a concerned pinata than anything else. Someone would have to break it open to get any real emotion out of it.

" . . . I actually kind of like it." Yang looked down at her mouth like she'd asked it a question and was surprised by the answer. "Like, I went to a spa once for my birthday, and I got this really great deep-muscle shoulder massage? I know it's a weird way of putting it, but it sort of feels like that for my tongue."

"Hmm. You never struck me as the type of girl to enjoy being pampered." And Blake had been struck by a lot of things, when it came to Yang. Thoughts crashing like cars all around, lips crashing like stars hit the ground . . . there was a song in it somewhere, but there was a song everywhere in Yang.

"I take good care of my body, thank you very much." Yang's face turned from silly to seductive as fast as she expected their first date was going to go. Assuming it hadn't already happened somewhere up the line, of course. Things were so mixed up. "I could take good care of yours, too, if you wanted."

"Tempting." Very tempting, actually. It would be very easy – lie back, close her eyes, smile a bit, and nod, and Blake could let Yang take her wherever either of them wished to go. But the easy way wasn't always the right way, and the best things were worth putting effort into. Yang was one of those best things. Blake planned on a lot of "effort". "But didn't you once tell me that there was a difference between slowing down and giving up?"

"So slap some slow-motion sugar on me." Yang's lips pursed, ready to enclose valuables, and her eyes knapsacked, ready to head out on adventures, and her eyebrows raised, not like anything in particular but certainly enough to make Blake laugh, and enough to make her lean in close, but then, that was everything Yang did.

"One dollop of whipped cream, coming right up." The last few words were spoken nearly against Yang's lips, and if there were a better metaphor for flirting with death, Blake wasn't sure what it was.

It was like flirting with death, because this kiss felt like a meteorite impacting the world, landing first of all, besides the atmosphere, on Blake's head. It was a powerful, ginormous thwack of unknown and unknowable feelings, certainly, but the main thing was, Blake could see it coming. Begin to prepare.

The first few kisses had been something like near-death experiences, too, but more the moments themselves than the buildup. A sense of separation from the self, a blinding ecstasy, an indescribable idea that everything was finally going right for once, and all the while there finally found Blake's place in the world, only for her to realize that her place in this world was a place somewhere outside normal day-to-day life. Heavenly, in a word.

There was a joke in there somewhere about Yang being divine, but Blake was a little too busy being smooched to articulate exactly what it was.

But this kiss was a tad different. Or rather, it was the same, but Blake had been adjusted to fully experience it. Before, the brilliance, the orchestrated performance, had blinded and deafened her, and all she could feel or smell or taste was a sort of flurry she could only define as _Yang_. Or, more accurately, _Yang, Yang, YangYangYangYangYangYang_ _ **Yang**_. But the novelty had worn off, leaving only the excitement, the ecstasy, the warmth, the softness, the acceptance, the exploration, and the unbridled sense of joy behind, which left just enough mental space for Blake to recognize that she, in fact, existed. And, more importantly, what Yang was doing to her at that moment.

Yang's nose brushed up against her own like a surreptitious romance novel, a passerby at a party and a wandering hand to match a wandering eye. Her hair tickled the edges of her face, as if to illustrate precisely how ridiculous that thought was, even if it was true. Her arms held Blake so tight, so close, it was as if she needed to check and make sure Blake was still there. And her lips . . .

. . . Yang apparently thought Blake would enjoy her sucking on her lower lip. She was absolutely correct.

If there was anything to compare it to, besides an out-of-body event, it would be a sense of battle awareness, which was of course directly related in any case. The first few battles, if a person had good instincts, they survived and figured out what they did later on after their recovery nap and three plates of food. After that, they began to understand a little about what they were doing.

After that, you could begin thinking about the best way to approach things.

Blake moved most of her hand away from Yang's back – a single finger left on lookout – and followed the path of Yang's spine to its inevitable end, cupping the back of her head gently, but firmly, as though holding an egg with the potential to end the universe. She leaned Yang's head just a tad to the right, tilted her own left, and managed to find the one point where the angles met, so she could deepen the kiss – if such was even possible, at this point.

Yang's shaky moan in response was almost enough to send her heavenwards again.

Blake gave Yang a smile, and felt her return the gift in kind.

And then Yang's hands moved to Blake's shoulders, she pressed her own body up against Blake's, and perhaps there was only so much gift-giving Blake could handle in a single evening.

But it wasn't like generosity, and it wasn't like a battle, either. It was like dancing, more than anything. There was no competition – not really, even if Yang kept stealing away the position of lead and Blake kept swiping it back – only the ebb and flow, the request and response, the quick darting movements that slid without apparent transition into the graceful dips and curls that brought vision and feeling to the song dancing in their heads. Yang pressed into Blake's body – inside partner step. Blake hooked her leg around Yang's hips – a gancho, perhaps, or a lock step. The swirl of Yang's tongue around Blake's and the answer of Blake's eager lips blurred with Yang's hand (not just her fingers, but her whole hand) tangling in Blake's hair, with Blake's fingers hooking just a centimeter under fabric, she wasn't sure where, time was meaningless, only the tempo mattered, it was as though they were dancing underwater, weightless and careful and _free_.

Which meant, eventually, they were going to have to come up for air.

It took a bit of convincing on Blake's brain's part – _I know this seems like a pretty awesome way to die, but if you let yourself breathe, you can get way more kisses later –_ but they did finally separate, drinking more than inhaling the air as Blake's gaze looked around the room for something more interesting to gaze at than the apple of her eye – fruitlessly. Blake wasn't ashamed; the problem was in fact the opposite: she was too eager. They'd start the whole business over again if she let herself look too soon.

But eventually, once she'd managed to reduce her air intake to small sips, looking was what she did. It was like staring at her own reflection, if looking in a magic pool that made every aspect of herself more wonderful and beautiful. Swollen lips, clothing slightly askew (especially her coattails; apparently _that's_ where Blake's fingers had scurried off to), hand over heart and eyes shining as though lit up from within, Yang looked at her like . . . like . . .

Well, like she was uncertain. Not unhappy – no one with that kind of smile could be unhappy, and anyone with that kind of blush was right out – but uncertain.

"You look pensive." That was a good word, though Blake wasn't sure where it came from. Her brain sure didn't seem to have come up with it.

If a wine snob dropped the snob, rolled down a hill covered in sunflowers, and picked up a loving selflessness, they might somewhat resemble what Yang looked like at that moment. "I'm trying to put my fing – erm, my tongue on how you taste." Blake had never thought that someone smacking their lips could be found sexy, and yet eroticism demanded Yang make several repeat performances. "Kind of like . . . not coffee. Related to coffee. Coffee beans' . . . way hotter older sister."

It was not the first time Blake had been compared to a plant, but usually the phrasing involved wallflowers. Or, well, the deadly nightshade. Usually the second one, actually. "Is the word you're thinking of 'mocha'?"

"Blake. Don't degrade yourself like that." Coffee snob it was, then – or at least, as much of one as Yang could pretend to be without frothing into laughter. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with milk and sugar – I like a caramel macchiato as much as the next girl - but nothing compares to the sophistication of pure black coffee." Her voice began dropping, and heating, and deepening, like a slow elevator ride with the proverbial cute blonde from accounting. Ah, _Ninjas of Love_. "Dark, steaming, rich in taste and texture . . ."

"Bitter?" Blake couldn't resist jabbing the Emergency Stop button.

"Nothing extra needed. Just you." Yang smiled like she was showing off an engagement ring, all beating hearts and far-off thoughts. It was enough to make Blake wonder at her warming warning - how could degradation be possible when Yang looked at her like she was the world's most personally precious gemstone? "Although, truth be told, I wouldn't mind a little 'cream' in my coffee . . ."

That line shouldn't have worked. Boy, did it ever. "I'm glad you're drinking this all up, then." The doubt coiled in her heart like a rattlesnake, an agitating sound filling her mind. "You . . . like the way I taste?"

Yang killed Grimm for a living, and she was good at her job. "I'm thinking of a word that starts with the letter 'e'. Guess what it is!" One little snake didn't stand a chance.

Blake giggled into her hand, like the schoolgirl she always tried to deny to herself she actually, genuinely was. "I'm hoping you're thinking of 'ecstatic' and not 'eeeew'."

"I was actually thinking of 'energizing' to go with the whole coffee thing." Sometimes, occasionally, Yang managed to say something to convince Blake all over again that she wasn't just an idealized figment of her imagination. "But 'ecstatic' is way closer to how I feel right now, so good job!" Yang's gaze dipped down to Blake's lips like a dumbbell released, and Blake noted the slow effort of them coming back up again. "Is it okay if I ask . . .?"

"How you taste?" Blake colored the question with rouge, or, really, colored the rouge with the question. "Hmmm. I'm not sure how to describe it. I think I might need another sample before I make up my mind."

Yang, Blake was beginning to notice, treated kisses like promises: easily and cheerfully given, enough so that it always caught her off guard how seriously she took them. It was about all she could notice through the thick haze of hormones, warm arms, and tiny gasps, but it was something, nonetheless.

"Think you've got the picture in your head, now?" Yang asked, once the Dust had settled. Not dust, but Dust, the crystalized potentiality. Dust which, Blake vaguely remembered, was an intoxicant when inhaled in large doses. And, _Dust_.

"That depends." There was, of course, such a thing as playing coy, but there was also such a thing as playing with fire. Then again, "playing with fire" basically described every single one of Blake's interactions with Yang over the past two months, if not even longer. And Blake had yet to be burned. "What was the question?"

Yang laughed, and kissed Blake again, and it was impossible to choose which one was more important or more wondrous. "Tell me what I taste like, Blakey."

Between the lingering gaze over Yang's entire form, the fingers tapping against her own lips, and the slow, lustful smirk, Blake was sure she was doing absolutely everything she could to titillate without actually touching Yang. Though if something else occurred to her . . . "I don't think I can really call it a taste. Saying there's a taste implies that I don't feel it in my whole body."

Yang's fingers skimmed across Blake's stomach, and there was the burning – but not the pain. Only the heat, only the licking flames, only the smoky look in Yang's eyes. "Believe it or not, Blake, I know you're teasing me. You'd better be a lot more careful about trying to distract me." And then her lips were at Blake's lower-left ear, and the devil on her shoulder could sit there and observe, because clearly it was only a rank amateur. "It might work."

Blake curved backwards, like a bowstring, and words like Cupid's arrows came wondrous and unbidden to her brain, from her heart. "There's a feeling I get before I go into battle, or an exam of some kind." Her voice was small, just wide enough to traverse the gap between them, as if she was trying to keep a secret from the rest of reality.

"What kind of feeling?" Yang asked, the only star in a smog-choked sky.

"It's this tingling, electrical sensation. All over me, like a second skin. It's like being on a tightrope over a sheer drop – but not because I'm scared of falling. I've never been much of a thrillseeker, after all." Not until recently, anyway. Not until her golden opportunity to indulge Yang's fantasies, and her own. "I'm eager. I'm ready. I know I'm too . . . I'm too _good_ to fall. I know I'm worth the life I've been given. I am certain that those moments, where I feel sparks over my skin, are the moments I prove I'm worth something. Those are the moments where I get to stop hiding in the shadows and step into the light. Those are the moments where I do something incredible." Like the period at the end of a chapter, a gentle touch nonetheless indicating the largest possible pause, Blake straightened back up, placing her hands on Yang's shoulders and touching her forehead to Yang's own. "Are you with me so far?"

"I'd follow you anywhere." Hesitation had never been one of Yang's qualities, but that moment, that sentence, was proof enough for Blake that she was still, somehow, in the habit of holding back. The world must have seemed like half-tempo to her, Blake realized, and her heart skipped a beat to think on that idea that maybe she was the only one capable of playing at the same speed.

"Imagine that feeling. Focus it." Blake commanded no more of Yang than she would ask of herself. She fit as much of that feeling as she could into that sentence, compressed it into a black hole of a command, inevitable with gravitas. Almost as inevitable as the closing distance between them. Almost as inevitable as . . . where was this night heading? "Focus it into a single point, as small as you can imagine. No, smaller." Yang's chuckle could break the bonds of a black hole if she wished, Blake was certain, but she kept it small and contained as Blake's own voice. "Put that feeling at a single point on your lips, right at the forefront. And then, as I grow closer, let it intensify . . . build . . . overwhelm you until you can barely think of your own name."

Blake. It was Blake Belladonna. She was Yang Xiao Long – and easier to remember. And those two names were all that mattered.

"In short, Yang, you taste like . . ." Blake's voice took on a familiar tone and inflection, though in truth she didn't feel like could ever imitate Yang. " _Anticipation_."

Yang was stillness's antithesis. More than that, she was its archenemy, seeking to erase all traces of stillness from the face of the planet. She was always moving, making others move, dashing and dancing and punching out miscreants like stillness, like calm, like underachievement. But now she was still. Now she was quiet. Now she was . . . smiling? "I'm not the only one who tastes like that, you know." Arms stronger than the nightmares wrapped around Blake's waist, holding her together. "I just figured the way you made me feel went without saying."

Alright. That made up Blake's mind. Yang Xiao Long was not leaving this bedroom with her clothes on.

. . . no. No, that wasn't actually what Blake wanted. That was something entirely different. Still, the point remained: she knew _exactly_ where this night was going, now.

But . . . just so long as they were talking about anticipation. "It's honestly amazing to hear you say that, Yang." Blake wasn't normally fond of sticky situations, but as she leaned back and Yang's arms refused to let go of her completely, she felt she could make an exception. Just this once. "But I never said that was _all_ you tasted like, did I?"

Yang's face flared with surprise and heat, like the meteor that suddenly finds a planet standing in its way. "Ahh. Alrighty, then." The arms evaporated from Blake's sides, and she had just enough time to mourn their absence before realizing that Yang was intending to prove her unstoppable nature. "Lay it on me." The bandana around her neck disappeared like layers of ice experiencing reentry, except, in reverse order, and laying on Yang was indeed a very tempting prospect.

Blake had seen Yang's bare neck before, of course. But this was her first time seeing it _privately_. There were things you could do to necks, in private. Things with moans in them. "Long ago, it is said, before men and monsters, there were gods and goddesses."

"Like you?" Yang tilted her head, and, suddenly, there was another curve to her body, another line of muscle laced with feminine softness, a gentle slope to rest upon, to trace with the mind's eye . . . it was like watching waves at the beach, Blake finally realized. Gentle, straight lines to curved, the sense that they could destroy you at any moment, drown you in them. They all connected together into a single ocean. Yang. "You never did answer my question about worship, you know."

"Hush, you." Blake would not let herself be outdone by a glorified headrest. Even one as glorious as Yang's neck. She had seams, too, and thread to undo, but if she had her way it would be Yang falling apart as she unwove the ribbon on her arm, as she wove her tale. "The gods were like mankind, but also not very like them at all. They were larger, for one thing, said to be wiser and more powerful than the later dawn of mankind. But they were also lesser, limited by natures they could not change, and unable to comprehend the concepts of time, fairness, or mortality."

Yang matched Blake's lazy loops with spiral patterns knuckled into her thighs, and Blake wondered how anyone could ever think Yang couldn't be subtle, or sly. "What about love?"

"The gods claimed their domain was more than man's, and they had no time for the affairs of those below." Blake pulled the ribbon off all at once, and maybe that was what performing a striptease felt like. Just a little bit. "Our love was only a pale reflection of something much greater, to them. Our greatest inventions, only toys. Our crowning achievements, worthy of scorn, or perhaps indulgence, as one would a child."

Yang had a habit of hitting conversations with pats on the back, for encouragement, that were actually strong enough to knock them flat on their faces. That only made it all the more noteworthy when she put a metaphorical, gentle, guiding hand on the story's shoulder to say, "You're talking about humans and faunuses, aren't you?"

Blake swiveled her head. She wasn't aware her head had a swivel function, but there it was. And there were the markings on her wrists left by pulling on her ribbon too tightly. "What makes you say that?"

"I'm not saying that humans are better than faunus!" Yang rushed to catch her conclusions. "Just like the gods weren't actually better than people. They saw themselves as being better than the people, but they weren't. Just different." Her voice dwindled as she spoke, like a sales price dropping on an unwanted product. "It's the same way as humans think of faunus."

Blake moved with as much speed as she could to lay a kiss on Yang's cheek – then even more, shooting out of her afterimage to finish the kiss on her other. Twice as much the cheering up, she hoped. "I can think of at least one who doesn't think that way." She tried one of Yang's grin on for size, and found it to be an extraordinarily good fit, if a tad tight. "In fact, I find the way you think to be very impressive. Most people don't pick up on the subtext in that old fable."

"Fairy tales are kinda my specialty." Yang was blushing so thoroughly that for a second, as silly as the notion was, Blake thought she'd kissed Yang's cheeks a shade too forcefully. "I used to read them to Ruby every night. It's . . . sort of interesting, being on the other end."

"'Happily ever after' won't rest solely on your shoulders as long as I'm around." Blake had never meant a sentence more. She didn't think she could mean something more than she meant that. "But first my little story must come to a conclusion."

"Proceed, madam." Yang and posh went together like honey and truffles. They didn't. But Yang, being honey and not particularly caring what it might be attached to, as it knew it was destined to be oversweet, tried it anyway.

Speaking of foodstuff. "The gods did not work like you or I did. They needed no air, no water, and no food like you or I know. They sustained themselves not on the food of mortals, but on ambrosia, the nectar of the gods. A mysterious substance, all things considered. Some say that ambrosia was beyond human reckoning, maybe some ancient Dust no longer found in this world. Others say that the nectar was metaphysical, the consumption of belief or raw possibility. Whatever the case may be, such food was meant for gods, not mortals, for if any mortal attempted to partake, they would be the one to end up consumed."

"I get it now. You're trying to say I taste like ambrosia." Yang's eyes were like napalm, a burning in them that stuck with you. "And that I'm too much for you to handle."

Blake pushed her hair back behind a human ear, tracing the edge of her lobe like it was a road on a map. A suggestion for what to do next. "No, actually." The second part, possibly – Yang was very much like going fishing and catching the Leviathan. "To be perfectly honest, I still can't quite tell what you taste like." Blake opened up the bedsheets of her subconscious, and allowed the memories to snuggle up and share warmth. "But I know if the gods had an inkling of how good you taste, they'd feel like they got the raw end of the deal."

Yang looked for all the world in that moment like a chamelon. An awkard pose held, a stare capable of stripping paint. A slow, slow shift in shade, beginning as a light pearl and ending up with a red Blake could only describe as 'rebellious rouge, shade 47'. "Geeze, louise, Blake." Yang was the only person Blake knew who wore embarrassment like it was a ballgown – outside Yang's norms, sure, but breathtaking and elegant. It was the way she showed it off even as she tried to hide it, the lean away that only emphasized the angle, the covering of the eyes when the crimson cheeks, corset and the shaky smile, satin, were so much more interesting. "The best I could come up with was 'coffee beans'!"

"Coffee beans' way hotter older sister." Blake supposed this was how fashion designers felt seeing their models walk the runway. Except, of course, with much more heat coiling in the belly. "An important distinction."

"How am I supposed to top that, though?" Yang didn't peek through her fingers so much as not bother moving her whole hand aside. She wasn't . . . playing coy, was she? "You're, like, playing symphonies at my window, and I'm painting graffiti on your bedroom door."

"I once belonged to a subversive anti-establishment organization, and you think I don't enjoy graffiti?" It was a bullet of a question, which might have been disastrous if Blake hadn't been using a water pistol. One painted up nicely and lovingly customized, but still. "I loved the coffee beans description. It was very flattering. Full-bodied. And the barista was very cute, too." There had to be a point, Blake supposed, where they were able to stop themselves. She only knew that it wasn't going to be tonight. "I only went as far as I did because I was trying to live up to the standards you set."

"You make expressing yourself look like the easiest thing in the world." Yang sat up, and for a moment, she was a silhouette, even to Blake's night vision. Some trick of the light. Some idea of what she looked like with only curves and smiles to wear. "Like, suddenly I believe magic is real, because, listen, you're casting spells. Right in front of me."

Blake raised both eyebrows, because one didn't seem like quite enough. "Are you actually complaining, or are you just trying to be sneaky with your compliments?"

"Mostly the second one." Yang grinned like a watermelon rind except, as Blake could attest, much yummier. "Little of the first, though. I mean, I'm already jealous of your hair, your brain, your voice, your legs . . . why not add mad writing skills to the list?"

If Blake addressed any of that, they'd go over a waterfall of compliments in a barrel together, and end up somewhere so far downstream from where this conversation was they'd have to start confessing their love to each other all over again. Best to just keep paddling. "We have different approaches, that's all. I tend towards the verbose and descriptive. The flowery, if you will. You, on the other hand, have a sharper, more succinct wit that I couldn't match with a hundred hours of focus and creativity. Snappy."

"Put us together and we're a snapdragon!" Yang leaned in close and sudden to say that, a work of art displayed in gilded frame and attached to a set of rockets. She was close (and fast) enough that Blake prepared herself for another atomic bomb of a kiss. What she got instead was a pun. Somehow, that seemed just as satisfying.

Blake gave Yang what she guessed was her satisfaction, too – she giggled. "See? That's exactly what I mean."

There comes a point at which boiling must cease, and Yang had apparently reached it. Still dangerously warm, still quite steamy, but the bubbly atmosphere seemed to pop as she settled into a smaller smile and a far-off look. "Nah. I mean, yeah. You're right. But it's still sort of hard to compare the two."

It was as obvious to Blake as a missing arm meeting fire that Yang wasn't just talking about their abilities to turn phrases anymore. Sentences like that were heavy enough to leave holes in your head, holes where reassurances and good cheer could echo until they lost all meaning besides babbling. Sentences like that chipped away at self esteem in ways that didn't matter until you looked up and realized it was all gone. Sentences like that were a cage constructed for one's self.

Blake, at one point, picked locks for a living. "Then tell me a story." A hand as sure and steady as her thoughts turned Yang's head, by her chin, like a key, to stare at her own reflection as in a lilac pool. A moment like an exclamation mark extended into ellipses, and she moved forwards, and forwards, just close enough for Yang's slightly hurried breaths to ask her questions that made her cheeks warm. "See if I like it."

An unfallen snowflake, a crystalline structure held in suspension, the quartz jewel by which the rest of the timepiece kept whirring around it – they were all correct, all the same description of the same moment held in time. This one. This split second where Yang held her gaze, like a spell, on Blake's own.

And then, Yang kissed her. Like a snowflake falling, a crystal shattering, like a timepiece falling apart, a glorious moment of reality being broken and the spell taking its proper place as part of the universe. Though not actually, perhaps, a snowflake, but a snowball, a tiny thing the size of one's thumb, done as quickly as a closed palm or a clenched fist. Or, a quick kiss.

Yang's presence left like an exhalation – though out of the lungs, the air was still right there, waiting to extend your life another breath. She wasn't even a centimeter away.

And then she kissed Blake again, and it was like pushing the snowball down a 30,000 foot snow-covered mountain.

There wasn't much Blake could do to avoid being overwhelmed - it's very difficult to avoid an entire avalanche from only a centimeter away, after all. That was precisely what that kiss was: an avalanche. A chill up the spine and an unstoppable force shortly followed by a warm, sluggish, irresistible feeling you could curl up in and sleep forever.

And then Yang's arms wrapped around Blake, her neck and her waist, and like a desperate rescue the world opened up to clear skies and fresh air, her entire existence becoming aware of something something that had always been there like it was something entirely new, because Yang deepened the kiss. Leave it to Yang to show Blake the skyline of her thoughts for the wonder it was, and all with one or two movements of her lip.

All Blake could do in response was make some sort of silly moany noise that was probably meant to be Yang's name. Then her brain got completely scrambled.

Not scrambled like eggs. Scrambled like radio signals, or coded messages, or something beyond Blake's ken, which was kennier than most as it was. Everything she was saying to herself seemed to be getting misinterpreted, her desires for control translating into an arched back and a golden name whispered against liquid lips, her hands taking the excuse to rebel, to push forwards in quite the literal sense, her hips deciding they wanted to dance, too, and there was really only one kind of dancing that hips got involved in . . .

It was at that moment that Blake realized what the problem was, or at least the part of Blake not occupied with touching as much of Yang as was physically possible. Her signals were getting crossed because of simple over-communication. Most of the time, Blake thought in sentences, and Yang made her think in paragraphs, in entire _pages_. Maybe the girl was the literary type after all.

There was no greater thrill than opening up a new chapter in a book, they said.

"This jacket needs to come off." Even now, even with a fog as thick as tar soup covering Jaune's forehead clouding her mind, Blake managed to find literary critique somewhere deep within her.

"Lots of things need to be getting off around here." They probably constructed the Pearly Gates and Yang's pearly whites from the same material. But from opposite ends of the "sin" spectrum. "But we can start with the jacket, sure."

"Is that an invitation to finish what we've started?" The devil on Blake's shoulder must have been practicing her ventriloquist act, because that couldn't have been her own voice, all husk and silk and kitten's claws. "Or are you just planning on pulling on my heartstrings until they break?"

"Let's just say I wouldn't mind if you wanted to go a little wild."Yang just walking around, being herself, could start a fire, possibly several of them. That sentence, however, could have started a fire when it was cripplingly wet.

Blake felt like she was proof of that, to debauch the metaphor. She'd never considered herself a forest, before, but the way the fire spread from the pit of her being up to her fingers, like an eruption to reshape a continent with, Blake felt like so in retrospect. Because now, she was only the warm yellow light of the embers left behind.

Embers and fire, emboldened and golden. Being Yang seemed to be as contagious as trees coming down with cases of emblazoning.

For instance, Blake had never been a fidgeter, but Yang's clothes suddenly seemed far too restrictive on her. Fingers flittered like the flame, and Blake's mouth worked to vent the excess heat into her partner, which was a bit like trying to stop a tree from growing with water and fertilizer, but who cared about logic at this point because Yang's jacket had a single button on it and that was _far too many buttons for any jacket to ever have._

If this what letting yourself lose control like, it was no wonder Yang smiled all the time.

But then, in so many ways, Yang had always been more in control than Blake. She gave herself over to her passions, but didn't let herself be ruled by them. She gave those who deserved it miles where others might give inches, but didn't let those who didn't deserve it take a single step out of bounds. She knew herself and her own heart, which was more than Blake could ever say about the faunus that she was.

Being Yang was contagious, and Blake suddenly found herself just as in control of Yang as Yang was. Her mouth gave way by inches, by miles, her heart opened up her arms and let a too-messy jacket slip off her shoulders, and her passions, oh, the way she moved. A pair of thoughts spread, like fire, to the rest of Blake's head, a couple questions like suns in orbit around some concept even closer to her heart.

Where might Yang let her touch? Where did Blake _want_ to touch?

The answer to the second one, at least, was as simple, effortless, accidental, and monumental as falling down the longest staircase in the world. Every inch of Yang was a temptation, like a treasure horde in a temple, and despite the possibility of rolling boulders, Blake felt an undeniable urge to pay her back for a million scratches behind the ears. With, because some things were obvious and straightforward, a fair amount of interest.

Undeniable, except, she denied it, if only half an inch away from twirling a golden strand around her fingers. Some things shouldn't be messed with. Some things were important.

"You're allowed, you know." Yang spoke so quietly, Blake wasn't sure she'd actually heard her at all. She wasn't normally prone to auditory hallucinations, but then again, she wasn't normally prone to seeing stars or getting tunnel vision, and there Yang's eyes were right there. Tonight was full of unreal sensations.

"Are you sure?" Blake had been stung by hope so many times she'd thought she'd built up an immunity. Yet here and now, she tasted the tell-tale traces of its venom on her breath and in her tone.

With a hand the talk of all the clamps around town and a gentleness that metal could not comprehend, Yang took her turn at guiding Blake's hand, softly pressing it against her head, within her goldy locks. The exchange rate between actions and words being what it was, Blake wasn't surprised by the sound of fireworks. "You're special to me. I don't want you to be scared of doing anything around me." She blushed, and perhaps atomic bombs and volcanic eruptions were more accurate descriptions of the noises between Blake's ears. That, and the heat. "Or with me, for that matter."

Gold fell through Blake's fingers like she was an adventurer reveling in a new-found treasure chest. In some respects, of course, she was. But in other respects, she hadn't found this treasure, or taken it for herself. Quite the opposite. "I'm honored." If the whole world was this soft, Blake didn't see any way anyone could ever be hurt.

"That feels . . . kind of nice. Like your hands are telling me a bedtime story." There were theories, of course, that space was an infinite expanse that was, in some way imperceptible by human senses, getting bigger all the time. Until now, when Yang's blush somehow got brighter than it already was, Blake had never really understood exactly how that worked. "Just, uh . . . I know this kind of goes against what I said, but, er, don't pull on my hair or anything like that, okay?"

Blake lay a kiss as soft as the hair she was holding on the top of Yang's head. If the old fable about spinning straw into gold was true, this must have been what gold turned into when it was spun. "Only if you promise you'll kiss me until my lungs give out."

The "absolutely" that left Yang's mouth seemed redundant, even if technically the kiss that it promised happened second.

And oh, hearkening back to old stories, was it a kiss. Once-upon-a-time worthy. Yang kissed her like Blake was in a fairy tale, and she was afraid she'd disappear at midnight or fall victim to some curse, and true love's kiss was the only protection they had. Philosophically speaking, it might even have been true, though Blake was beginning to suspect that she'd had the exact opposite ideas from reality about which parts of the old standby stories were to be considered real.

Yang's hair gave her fingers a feeling like walking on warm water.

But the impossible left those fingers satisfied, which meant that wanderlust was slowly creeping over the rest of Blake's body. Even then, though, the furthest and most thorough wanderers had to settle down eventually, and that feeling chose to take up occupation as the tingling on Blake's lips. Since Yang had been kind enough to undo her bandanna earlier . . .

Of course, that whole train of thought was less a plan of action and more solving a locked room mystery with only a line of excessively flushed skin to answer the question of where Blake found herself and why she was there. Somewhere in the process, a generous portion wound up in Blake's mouth and suction was applied, a sound so small Blake tasted it beneath Yang's skin rather than heard it and a fumble of fingers flying to the back of her head, tips just below catty ears serving as all the encouragement she needed to keep going – Yang accomplished more with a sound even Blake couldn't hear and touch she was on the edge of feeling than the White Fang did with years of brainwashing.

There was a feeling in Blake's mind that was slowly overwhelming her, like molten gold pouring between the cracks in her neurons, brilliant in its blaze, and dense, so very dense. The feeling wasn't telling her she _had_ to do anything, but its presence made certain things suddenly seem like the best portion of philosophy ever conceived of by man or faunuskind, and Blake took care of the rest without really discussing it amongst herself.

Like biting down, for example.

And Yang, with a cry to the heavens that reverberated at the planet's heart, put a noise to that great, wide feeling as she bit. " _Oh_!" she cried, tenuous but certain of it, like a master's fingers fluttering across piano keys.

Fingers fluttering across black and white, forcing musical tones from tension. Thinking like that might kill Blake – if the noises Yang was making didn't do the job first.

"Blake?" There was a growing bruise on Yang's neck, and Blake was unmarked. Yet the only person Yang's voice held concern for was her partner. If there was a descriptive text any more emblematic of Yang, it probably started with the word "suddenly" and ended with some type of comparison to a large explosion. "I'm not hurt, I promise. I actually really liked -"

"Make that noise again." The weight inherent to Blake's own voice surprised her. It was like attempting to pick up a dollar bill glued to the sidewalk and finding you had just somehow picked up an entire city block. The only thing more surprising was the sparks the friction lashed from between her tongue and her teeth.

Yang smiled, and suddenly there was a large explosion. "Make me."

Blake did more than make her. She marveled. She marveled, as her lips met Yang's own once more, on how a single part of someone's body could be so very much. A thousand smiles, a million in potentia, and each frown as rare and meaningful as a four-leaf clover in the bouquet of a lover. Yang's was a mouth connected to an endlessly fuzzy mind – not Yang's own, but Blake's, because that mouth was like a shot glass, with no glass bottom anywhere in reach of an eternally thirsting tongue. They were ne'er do well lips – or close, at least. They seemed to be doing pretty well at the moment.

They were a world and a comet alike, a burning, blazing, blitzing crossing of the sky, holding the intelligence and wit of an entire universe beneath its melting structure. Blake wondered, as she probed, if her lips seemed as cosmic as Yang's practical horoscope's worth of constellation, all teeth and gums and starlight.

But even though the entire universe seemed to have collapsed and left all its potential energy dancing between the two of them, something in Blake's mind rebelled, maybe just because that was what Blake tended to do whenever things seemed strange and overwhelming, like the sky was falling in, or like Yang had kissed her six, seven times now. But there was something specific – something floating free outside of universal collapse. Something itching at Blake's mind like crust in the eyes come the morni -

Eyes. Morning. Light.

That was it.

"Yang, wait, hold on. Before we do anything. I just remembered something." Eyes like morning light woke Blake, just as she always dreamed they would. Yang's orbs glowed, alright, but not literally, which was the core of the current situation. "You're human."

Yang blinked, repeatedly, like watching a video of the sunrise at a rate of one frame per second. "Well, I know I can be rather foxy, but I didn't think there was any confusion about it . . ."

"No, I mean, you're not a faunus." There was a hole here. There hadn't been a hole here before. Blake had the sneaking suspicion that she was holding a shovel. "Well, that's not what I – ugh. Okay. What I'm trying to say is that, unlike me, you don't have night vision. And in case you didn't notice, like I didn't notice, we've been sitting in the dark for at least half an hour now."

"Oh, that makes a lot more sense." The words fell from Yang's mouth like a drop to the grass to look up at the night sky. With just about as much sudden pontificating. "Still kind of funny, though. Bet I'd be a dragon faunus."

"I don't think those exist." Although Blake figured Yang would probably find a way to be one, anyway. Really, it was a surprise the girl didn't have scale plating and a treasure horde as it was. "The long and the short of it is, there are two people in this room, and only one of them can see right now. That hardly seems fair to me."

"Eh, it's not like it's perfectly dark in here. Things are a little blobby and black, but I can still kind of make stuff out." Another lovely slideshow, where all the slides were out of order, judging by the picturesque expressions on Yang's face. "It sounds sort of bad, huh? But really, it's no big deal if you want them off." There was the right slide, at last – and judging by the expression on Yang's face, it was nothing short of pornographic. "I can just feel my way around."

"I don't really care one way or the other, to be honest." Blake's shoulders didn't get a lot of practice shrugging – her talent for it was as natural as her talent for stoicism. Not natural at all, that was to say. Both were essentially domino masks to hide her face when things got too hot for the blood beneath her cheeks to handle. "After all, you're likely to do a lot of feeling around either way." Or at least Blake hoped so. The blood beneath her cheeks needed some practice of their own.

"Caught me red-handed." Yang raised her red hands into the air, and away from Blake, which was just about as disappointing as if she'd been moving ice cream cones out of her reach. Then again, it did give Blake the opportunity to see her arm muscles in motion, which was enough to convince her that removing Yang's jacket had been the greatest notion she'd acted upon this entire evening. About time some of her ideas were good ones. "But I'm gonna catch you red-cheeked one of these days. Though, now that we're talking about it . . . you aren't embarrassed?"

Blake snapped out of attempting to connect licking ice cream cones and Yang Xiao Long in her mind, which was different from what she usually did in that it wasn't different at all, actually. "Isn't feeling around the goal of the exercise?"

"No – well, yeah, if we do it right." The look on Yang's face granted Blake very limited psychic powers to let her know exactly what Yang was thinking at that moment: it was sort of hard to do it wrong. "I mean, I just thought you were being shy. It was kind of cute, actually."

"Shy?" Cute? "Ah-ha. Well, I'm sure you'll be happy to know that I have absolutely no problems with you leering at me as often and as openly as you want. In fact, I sort of like it." With a smile like a warning sign Blake knew Yang would ignore, Blake leaned forwards. Slowly, but certain, a lever to control a rudder that controlled a ship that was on a voyage to a far-off land where she and Yang could play all by themselves. "A lot."

"Ooh. Kitten likes to show off." Yang gave out nicknames like keys to her house, or maybe her heart. Very few people got them, but those who did had a place to crash when worse came to worst, no matter what. Blake, the faunus's heart leapt like children on trampolines at the thought, had received two of them.

"Only for you." The words were a negligee, all lace and seductive softness and, yes, even some showing off. "You've already seen everything in my head, after all. Why shouldn't I want you to see the rest of me?" The suspicion crept up on Blake like an old friend - one she was too scared to leave behind in case no one else wanted to be friends with her. "You do _want_ to look, right?"

"Is that a real question?" Yang's voice didn't quite touch upon disbelief, but there was some definite flirting involved there. Both with disbelief, and with its close cousin Blake Belladonna. "If it is, the answer is yes. Also, duh. You're like liquid sex, Blake."

If Blake were liquid, Yang was solid: dependable, strong, less likely to change to outside pressures. But still some state of sex, of course. But that seemed like it would be weird to say, so instead Blake said, "I'm glad to hear that."

"I'm _really_ glad to say it." Yang was also the embodiment of the person who, directing air traffic, decided to start dancing in order to see what patterns in light they could make with their marshalling wands. Put it another way, "solid" was not the same thing as "unmoving", and philosophy had a lot more to say about semantics than it thought it did.

It was enough to make a black cat grin – enough, in fact, to enter a black cat in a grinning competition and come second only to certain Cheshires. "Well, now I'm curious." Blake lowered her head like a sunset, and wondered vaguely if the sun ever needed to look for extra light. She felt, in a pinch, like Yang could provide. It'd be a red light, of course, but she'd provide. "If that's the case, why didn't you ask if you could turn the lights on?"

Yang started. Maybe like a vehicle starting, or maybe like an eruption. Either way, there was heat involved: Yang's cheeks burned even brighter than she would in battle, and the rest of her expression melted like lemonade ice cubes on a hot day. "I don't wanna do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable."

Hmm . . . lemonade. Was that what Yang tasted like? Lemonades's 'way hotter older sister' perhaps? No, not that. But closer. "You're a very illuminated individual, Yang Xiao Long. And awfully sweet." Blake kissed Yang as quickly as she could get away with – as in, literally get away, because if she'd held it a moment longer Yang would have had to hold her captivated. And that would be absolutely terrible. "Now, about 'illumination' . . ."

"Huh?" Yang was evidently giving Blake a preview of what she'd look like when she hit the legal drinking age. Beautiful as ever, to judge, if a tad less steady on her . . . everything. The phrase 'smile, shaken, not stirred' should really enter the lexicon. "Oh! Oh, right!" She turned on the lamp, which, metaphorically speaking, was just about everything she ever did, was, and embodied. Not a source of light, but the reason one's own light became real, electrified, instead of just some impossible idea.

The difference between night and day, as far as Blake was concerned, was mostly irrelevant. Blake's night vision was like a filter on a camera, shading everything, but keeping the definition and color balance. Things didn't really look different as much as they looked similar, like seeing the same facial structure in all the girls in three generations of a particular family, possibly one that dealt in Dust and bigotry. Put it more simply, when it came to most things, Blake didn't really care about lighting.

But Yang Xiao Long was _made_ for the limelight.

The night was fine. Not fine as in mediocre, but fine as in wine. Yang was curves a faunus with complexes could get drunk to forget on, and smiles as wicked as devil or wicked as a skateboard trick, and tap-dancing eyes that made Blake's heart join in on the dance floor.

In the day, she was all that and polished to a shine. Literally, a shine, a glow around her that might have been more than the light her body reflected – it seemed odd to Blake that she should cast a shadow. Yang was a gem.

She was about as still as a gem was. Crystallized, frozen, unmoving, other synonyms listed off until Blake could find the right one because stillness and Yang were like tears and a hot cup of tea with, of course, a bit of honey. It was true that Yang usually did go a bit stiller when looking at Blake – like she had to dedicate extra processing power to take all of Blake in, and she'd be lying if she said she didn't enjoy the idea – but she never froze over, like winter, like everything this sweet Summer's stepchild would never ever be.

Her eyes. Gemstones. Beautiful, shining, priceless- but absolutely motionless. A single point, just above Blake's belly button – that's where they were looking, and nowhere else at all. They were the only things that moved more quickly when Yang looked at Blake; the way they raced over her form always made her heart race in turn. Yang could do a lot with Blake's heart with a glance, apparently – including stop it, just as they'd stopped.

"Is something the matter?" A hug seemed like too much, like dropping a boulder in a pond and wondering where the ripple went as the wave began falling on your head. So Blake instead let her hand envelop Yang's, like a hug in miniature. "If you want to stop, we can."

"No, I wanna go, it's just . . . this is gonna sound really weird." Yang face burst once more with red, and Blake was struck by memories of summer evenings and chasing fireflies. She always thought if she followed them long enough, they'd lead somewhere. Maybe she was right after all. "Promise you won't burst out laughing or anything like that?"

Blake barely managed to stop herself from saying "I would never laugh at anything you'd say." Someone needed to be editing her thoughts better. She clearly wasn't doing a good job. "I promise. What's wrong?"

It wasn't a look like Yang had let down her guard. It was a look like she was only just now realizing she'd let down her guard about half an hour ago, and couldn't quite figure out how to get it back up again. "I'm scared that if I touch you . . . I dunno. It feels like . . . if I touch you, I'm gonna . . . break something."

There was the lost ripple – or, perhaps, there was the pebble, and Blake took care of the ripple on her own. "You didn't seem to have any trouble with it before." Blake treated the words like a sword, wrapping them in foam. They would harm too easily, otherwise.

There was a bit of silence – like a beat of silence, but less musical. And then, with a look on her face and a swallow in her throat like she'd just taken some sorry medicine, Yang passed Blake the cup. "It was just a game, before."

The reality of the situation could have at least had the common courtesy to knock before it broke the doors down between them and it. But then, reality never could be called "decent", and it certainly wasn't in the practice of giving out warnings. It just sort of shows.

But as tangled as the situation suddenly was, yarn could only distract from sturdier things for so long. Considering the inconvenience of it all wouldn't do anyone any good. ". . . you're right." With a hand as certain and insistent as the inconvenience of reality, Blake grasped Yang's wrist. "Here. I want you to feel something for me." She led Yang to her heart with a smile, which was basically just an extension of what she'd already done. "And I don't mean my boob."

"Wow. Did you sneak one of Ruby's 'special' sundaes when I wasn't looking?" Yang's good humor melted like an ice cream bar, leaving only concentration intense enough to, well, melt ice cream. "Your heart feels like a jackhammer."

"I keep myself hidden, sometimes." Blake had to move quickly from that slightly shadowy sentence, lest Yang point out that 'sometimes' was an understatement the way 'likes the color black' was an understatement. "Unflappable, I think you called it. But when it comes down to it, I could never really hide my heart from you." And Blake might as well show Yang her teeth, while she was at it. It was technically a smile, though the hammer of her heart rattled its edges. "I don't think I actually want to."

"You're trying to get the gunk out." There was a tone of voice people used when they figured out puzzles. There was also a tone of voice people used when they looked in the back of the books to see what the answers were. Yang's voice was the second one. "Just as scared as I am, huh?"

Blake nodded, a single percussion tap on the rhythm of reality. "You're right. This isn't just a game, or some fantasy between the moments we get to spend together. This is _real_. And that's . . . wonderful, beautiful, extraordinary. But it also means that there will be consequences for this." She considered her next sentence, like she considered how she'd leave the White Fang. In the end, there was nothing to do but to do it, and there was no real way to say it, but to say it. "Your sister may be the leader of our team, but you're my partner. You're the one I believe in more than anyone else. _You're_ the person I trust the most. And no matter what, I will always have your back, and I'll always go with you into battle." Blake smiled like an unfurling banner, and stood by for Yang to lead her charge. "That's why being scared doesn't matter to me anymore. I believe in you."

" . . . that doesn't sound right." Yang looked away. She always did, eventually, and it never felt like quite enough, and it was always disappointing. But this time, there seemed to be something furtive in the aside. "I-I mean . . . it doesn't have the ring of truth, you know?"

"If you don't think this is a mission we should go on together, at least not now, then I understand." Ah, yes, Blake's heart was worse than drumming, now. Now it was _itchy_ and drumming. Fantastic. "It's your call."

"No, no, hold on. Hold on." Someone had nudged aside the needle on the phonograph and started scratching the record. Yang seemed like the likeliest culprit. "You're looking from completely the wrong angle here. Self-sacrifice is supposed to be _my_ thing."

Blake blinked, belying brainy bewilderment. "You've left me somewhere far behind you on the highway, Yang. Please pull over."

"Here." Before another word was said, Yang grabbed the wrist that wasn't occupied with anything except keeping Blake's hand attached. Delaying words even further – there was evidently some sort of construction project happening on this highway – she placed that attached hand just above her breast. It was a heartfelt imitation. "Grab my boob; we're going on an adventure."

"I . . ." Blake chuckled. Sometimes life left her with no other options. "I suppose it's only fair. You get to cop a feel, I get to cop a feel."

"Shhh." As opposed to taking her hand off of Blake's chest, Yang bent down towards her hand in order to press her index finger to her lips. And in that moment, Blake realized she'd never actually taken her own hand off of Yang's wrist. "We're having a heart to heart."

Heart to . . . Blake felt her ears twitch, like a bug trying to tune into the internet with its antenna. She'd thought that heartbeat she'd heard had been her own, but . . . no, now it was clear. A second rhythm, a shadow of the first, less corporeal but sixteen times as thick, stretching ahead of the first pulse into the horizon like charcoal at mach 7. "How can you stand it beating that fast?"

Yang's smile inflated like a hot air balloon. Adventure, indeed. "Guess what makes it beat like that. If you're right, I'll tell you. It's like a game!"

"Another one?" Blake's tone of voice was dry, in the same way a planet comprised entirely of one large desert stuck in orbit around a planet comprised entirely of water was dry. "And here I thought we'd led each other into disaster often enough."

"Just one more, promise." One more game or one more disaster? With Yang, it could be either. With Yang, it was probably both. With Yang, Blake couldn't ever quite resist. "I'm feeling pretty generous today, so you get three guesses."

"You're nervous?" Occam's Razor tended to glance off of Yang's skin like, well, most things, but with two extra guesses and confirmation that, despite all appearances, Yang was in fact capable of feeling fear, it was worth the time to sharpen the blade.

"Strike one." Like a pop fly in low orbit, Yang's voice crested and didn't show any signs of coming back down. "That's part of it, but not the main reason. Try again! You've still got another two guesses to go."

" . . . you're excited." If the fingerprint-shaped bruises forming on Blake's hips could be classified as proper citizens of her body at this early stage in immigration, then yes, the vote carried that Yang Xiao Long was very excited at that point in time.

"Closer. Also a part of it. I mean, come on, look at you." Yang said it like it was something to talk about over breakfast, something easy and certain the brain didn't really have to wake up for to think about. Something nearly objectively true. "Give it another shot."

This question was a stumper, and though Blake considered herself a knowledgeable lass, forestry was not her strong suit. Branches were more for libraries and paper better served in books, in Blake's experience . . . oh. Oh. "Oh my gosh," Blake struggled to get the words out. She needn't have sabotaged herself further with the giggling, and yet.

Yang was much better practiced at cheerful insistence than her sister. An entire legion of pokes with a marching chant of cheerful "Huh?", backed by artillery shaped like cheerful smiles, was easily outmatched by the one-syllable army of Yang's "Hmmm?"

Of course, of course, of course. Far worse than merely obvious. Yang was going for _cliche_. "You're in love."

"Ding ding ding! We have a winner!" Yang shrugged, it matched oddly well with her smile, and Blake wondered if possibly being able to feel the movement of her shoulder muscles beneath her palm was the intended prize. Honestly, it could have been. "My heart always beats this fast when you're around. You just kind of get used to it."

"You know, if you wanted to test out your pickup lines on me, you didn't have to go through all this trouble." The realization of what Blake had just given her partner permission to do drove by her brain like someone riding the bicycle she'd neglected to chain up three blocks back. Nothing really for it but to think, "oh. Whoops."

"Really? Huh. I'll have to remember that for next time." Yang's goofy grin didn't fall off so much as it went into hiding, a prime suspect in the frown like an inquisition that was marching upon its steadholdt. "But right now, though, I need you to answer me something." The bedsprings creaked as Yang leaned forwards, a small reminder to Blake that her yellow-petaled flower of a face wasn't actually the entire world. "Is your heart only beating that fast, right now, because you're afraid?"

The penny dropped. "No." Rapidly followed by the nickel. "No, of course not. I mean, that's part of it, but I didn't mean to imply . . ." And then, at last, the rest of Blake's wallet. "But I did. I did imply. And maybe part of me meant to, too."

"Life is about more than facing down fears." Yang had always liked fortune cookies. Blake was beginning to become fond of them, too. "And hearts are basically what keeps life going. You have to listen to everything it's saying, or you don't know what's happening in your life."

Blake turned this over in her mind. It looked about the same from the bottom side, just a bit backwards. "So . . . you want to keep going, then?"

"Kitten. I know what I want, but it's not _about_ what I want _._ This is about what _we_ want. _Together_." The hero rose, triumphant, the dragon was slain, the princess was rescued from her plight, and Yang beamed, once upon a time, once more. Somewhere in her eyes, the sequel was being written. "That's what being partners _means_."

"Yang." A lifetime of absorbing words like an organized ink blotter, and that was the only word Blake could find to say. Everything else seemed to be hiding inside the lump in her throat.

"I love you, Blake." There it was again. That impossible sentence. "And I love you for a lot of reasons. Your passion, your kindness, your brain, your patience, your cute little kitty ears and way cuter butt."

It was like having a butterfly land on your nose. Blake could act annoyed, but deep down she couldn't help but marvel at the moment, and moreso that it was happening to her. "All this time and you're still trying to make me blush?"

"You kidding? I'm not ever gonna stop. It's real easy, if all I have to do is tell the truth." Yang's eyes were soft and softer and softer, like purple dye spreading through the ocean. "I love you so much, Blake, but the thing that makes me stick to the idea . . . the thing that makes me think it would work, you and me?" Her voice was softer too, now, like a bed in and of itself, someplace private she and Blake could lie down together. "You always know what to do. You always know who you are. The entire world tries to beat you down, and you stand up and say 'no', because you know what the right thing is." Her smile spread like the view from opened curtains on a penthouse suite, and somehow, Yang always made Blake think of someplace far off that was still, nonetheless, a home. "You're one of a kind, Blake. You're everything I ever wanted to be."

There was a war going on in Blake's brain. What life had taught her, hard knocks and deep cuts and more dead and wounded than most people could imagine, fought against a single girl with a smile that could disarm a nation and a Semblance built for combat. And Blake was losing. Or . . . winning. Maybe. "I . . ." It was less that her preprogramming won, and more a final charge on dying horseshoes. "I'm not anyone special."

"You absolutely," a kiss on one cheek. "Positively," a smooch on the other. "One hundred and ten percent are." A peck on the forehead, to complete the set. Some collectibles you couldn't put a price on. "That's why I know you'll make the right choice. You always have." What was that look on her face? A promise of some kind. Blake was certain she knew what, if she could just . . . remember. "So look past that fear. Look past your concern, and whatever it is you think you're . . . supposed to be doing. Look past the fact that you're _really_ turned on, even – I know that part's super hard with your hand on my chest and all, but . . ." Yang let go of her wrist, seeming fearful that might actually be true instead of simply more banter. Blake couldn't help but hold her hand there, so, maybe it was. "Tell me what _you_ want, Blake. Deep down, past everything else. That matters just as much as what I want."

For a few moments, there was a reverberating quiet, like the absence of sound left by the cessation of a booming horn and the quieting of a marching army.

Then there was the sense that something was about to happen, like a tingling sensation in the Aura just before a firefight broke out.

And then . . . and then . . .

"I want your fingers beneath the fabric of my shirt." The sentence glimmered like gold, heavy enough in Blake's hands that her whole body seemed more sluggish for the weight. It seemed the centerpiece of the entire evening, a brick like that. "I want to feel you groan my name against my lips. I want you to trace patterns on the small of my back. I want to see your hair spread out across my pillow. I want you to come undone. I want to hear all the different ways you can say my name." But she couldn't slow down, not now, not when speed was the most important thing, not when she couldn't afford to give herself a chance to think about things, not when Blake always, inevitably, led herself to the wrong conclusions. "I want to go to the beach with you. I want us to draw our own constellations in the night sky. I want anniversaries and birthdays and fighting and making up and building a life together." Her heart so fast, so full to bursting, it felt like one long beat, Blake drew breath in heaving pants. She felt lighter, somehow. "I want to believe in the future again. I want _you_ , Yang."

And then, hands over each others' hearts like they were swearing an oath, Yang moved in to kiss her again, and Blake met her as close to halfway as she could manage, and together the prison walls finally fell down. Freedom, sure, blue skies, yes, fresh air, wonderful, but Yang's mouth . . .

And then, hands over each others' hearts like they were swearing an oath, Yang moved in to kiss her again, and Blake met her as close to halfway as she could manage, and together the prison walls finally fell down. Freedom, sure, blue skies, yes, fresh air, wonderful, but Yang's mouth . . .

Blake was crying. Two or three tears, but crying nevertheless, and Yang reached up to wipe those tears away, by intuition, one could only suppose. She was crying, and she wasn't ashamed of it.

The separated, as slowly as they could manage, or maybe even slower than that. One more second, that's all they wanted. Maybe it was all they could bear. "I want you, too." It was totally unnecessary of Yang to say – she'd made the message clear enough. At the same time, though, Blake truly needed to hear it. "I always have."

"Heh." It wasn't quite sardonic laughter that Blake managed to stammer out, but it did have some sard on. Much closer to something genuine, but also nowhere near as close as Yang deserved from her. Or, Blake supposed, she deserved from herself. "And here you are, worried you're going to break something."

Yang had bent forwards to kiss Blake, and rested her forehead against Blake's own now. So she had to look up, as if Blake was something Yang dreamed of, but could only find in the indistinct shapes in the clouds. "Don't worry. I promise, if there's one thing in this world I'd never ever _ever_ break, no matter what? It's your heart." Maybe she wasn't looking up, come to think of it. Direction was relative, after all – and that sure looked like a galaxy swirling twixt her eyes. "Trust me on that."

"I know. And I do trust you." Blake had smiled for effect, had grinned for the sake of distraction, had twisted words with the curl of her lip. She'd smiled for others, for Yang, before, to show she was happy, to reassure and cajole. But there and then, she smiled because she just couldn't help herself. "That's why I've given it to you. For safekeeping."

"Possibly the best thing you've said all night." Yang might've actually said the words, or Blake's brain might have merely seen the look on her face and done some translating. Blake didn't really care which it was, because Yang was leaning in again, and if nothing else, Blake was good at pattern recognition and, she hoped, kissing back.

The feelings came almost too easily, and the memories almost too vividly. They ran tongues over each others' own like trying to get a sense of the sea with a pinkie toe on the shore, with the niggling feeling that if either of them really wanted a beginning of a grasp on it, all it would take was one wave and an allowance. So _deep_.

Gosh, Yang kissed like a dream. A lucid dream. Blake could control the flow of it, if she concentrated. And even in the sadness of waking up, there was the sense that world Blake had made for herself would be waiting for her when she fell back asleep.

Yang blinked – presumably, getting rid of the sleep from her eyes. "So. Turns out all I ever needed to do to understand what you were feeling was grab your funbags." Yang didn't move an inch. Not even a muscle. Somehow, Blake could still tell she was restraining herself from making boob-grabbing motions.

"Don't sell me so short." Now this smile, this smile, Blake wore like low-cut jeans. A girl liked to show off, now and then. "I grabbed your lady pillows, too."

"Well. Grabbing boingy bits aside, along with thinking up new names for them, because I'll be honest, I'm fresh out . . ." Yang clearly didn't want her countenance to look so confused, but didn't seem to have much choice in the matter. Like her face had painted itself into a corner. With radioactive paint. "I still haven't got a clue what I'm supposed to be doing with my hands, here. You're like this big wide-open beach, and I've never built sandcastles in my entire life."

"Don't sandcastles tend to be pretty transient real estate?" Well. Hadn't everything, this far?

"Yeah, but watching the big wave come in and destroy everything is half the fun!" If someone's face could be described as frolicking, Yang's face would be described as an entire festival. She lit up at night, and even the silly games of catch the goldfish and test your strength suddenly seemed entirely too romantic to be real.

"Pffft." All of a sudden, Blake was considering living in a carnival. Who could care if the food was too fattening when, ah, the rides. "Okay. I see where you were gong with that one, now."

"Cowabunga," Yang managed to make the single word sound like a love poem. Maybe someday Blake would get to that level of sophistication of speech. In the meantime, there were always other things she could be doing with her mouth. "Soooooo, yeah. I dunno. Got any pointers? Besides 'be yourself and have fun'. I, uh, sorta figure that goes without saying."

Perhaps, but Blake was already having trouble just doing that. "Well . . ." She looked in her mind for anything that might be relevant. Some things seemed right, but only when looked at from behind. A request to turn, and, no, she was certain the correct thing to say didn't have a mustache. "Not really. _Ninjas of Love_ , sad to say, has left me woefully under-prepared to face the real deal." Blake made a note to herself: unless trying to sound dominantly sexy, stop referring to sexual activities with Yang – or anybody else, as much as she didn't plan on it anytime in the future - in the same way she'd refer to fighting some sort of Grimm. "Which, I suppose, can only mean that we both should be following your advice."

Yang was briefly surprised, but recovered like a champ – specifically a world champ, of the "recovering from surprise" competition. "Gonna have to be more specific than that. I've had a lot of humdingers over the years." 'Humdinger' was probably number nine or so on the Top Ten List of Least Sexy Words. Yang, like a lot of other inadvisable things, pulled it off with bodacious aplomb.

"I should be telling you what I want." Blake lay out Yang's cards on the table, like some game of poker in which they were both blatantly cheating. "And you should do the same for me."

"Huh. You're right. _I'm_ right. I'm a genius!" Yang snuck a kiss more quickly than Blake had time to respond to, which was a shame, because she'd thought up some pretty good ideas. "You're a genius."

"And they say _opposites_ attract." Blake fidgeted, like a wind-up toy, and realized upon release that she was only spinning her wheels. "Um . . . okay. Wow." She could almost heart the whirring noise in her ears. "I always thought . . . when I thought about this . . . I wanted you to start with . . . my neck." A touch of her finger at a point near the back-left side, because that was where the whirring was coming from, maybe? "Right back here."

"A massage?" Yang's smile stretched into her fingers, somehow – Blake could feel the cheerful way they wriggled. "I could do that, no problem."

"Not a massage. A, er, hickey." Blake shouldn't have been saying that. There were public indecency laws to consider. No, it didn't matter that she and Yang were in the privacy of their shared bedroom – and at that moment, it hit her that they shared a bedroom, and Blake moved forwards just to avoid thinking about that. "Or maybe, just, you know, lips and tongue in general . . ."

"Well, if you insist, I think I can definitely put 'necking' on my list of things to do to you." Yang's voice was tucking in under silken sheets with a low fire going after a long, exhausting day. Very, very diplomatic about the idea of Blake just staying in bed, no matter what happened. "How about the rest of me? Anything in particular you want me doing?"

" . . . besides 'me'?" It was the obvious course of action, saying that. So was striking a nail with a hammer. Some things just weren't that complicated.

"Yeah, but, you know, we're working up to that." Oh, Dust, Yang couldn't have picked a better thing to say. "Working _you_ up." And Blake took it back.

"Oh, definitely." Blake had been going for coy and slightly sarcastic. It came out like something Yang would say. "Uh. Stay up there for a while, but you can move . . . this is . . . actually happening. You can move down when, you know, you want to. Your hands can. Uh." Blake considered. If she really endeavored to list all the things she was perfectly fine with Yang's hands doing, they'd . . . this was Friday evening . . . they'd miss all their classes on Monday, and a significant portion of Tuesday as well. "Well. I guess this is the part where you tell me what you want."

"We both know I'm not as good with words as you are. Pretty sure I'm gonna have to _show_ you instead of telling you." Yang's laughed as if pure catnip could have a noise, but something in the concerned look she gave Blake after left her sober as a professor with a hangover. "If you don't mind. I mean . . . if that's what you want."

"Oh, Yang." It wasn't as thrilling a sentence as some, but in her short experience with carnivals, Blake tended to find the teacup ride much more exciting than the roller coasters, in any case. Put more simply, it was actually sort of nice to be worried about like that. "I mind so little, I think I might not be thinking at all."

"Hey, that's cool. I don't think very much either, and I get through stuff just fine!" Like a battering ram made entirely out of personality, Yang was.

"Not having to think does have its appeal." Blake tilted her head, as though trying to let her thoughts just leak out of her. Showing her neck off to Yang's hopefully hungry mouth had absolutely nothing to do with it, except maybe everything to do with it, of course. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to distract me?"

Someone must have lit something in Yang's mouth on fire for there to be that much smoke in her eyes. "Your wish. My command."

Yang would be a prodigy in the world of championship darts, Blake felt, because her lips moved to her neck and, erm, _bullseye_. Her hands, seemed to agree, engaging in a series of victorious celebrations that the newspapers would undoubtedly call 'scandalous' come the morning and that Blake could only call 'insufficient' at the moment.

Well, she'd call it insufficient if she weren't busy saying Yang's name in a way that would almost certainly get her banned from any public location and a fanblog by the morning after.

Either way, possibly the way Yang's hands kept moving up against the undersides of her breasts, the roll of her hips, the base of her neck, but never any further, made Blake think that she was undergoing karmic retribution. It was a fitting punishment for all the conversation topics she'd gleefully avoided, whimsical wordplay a fine shelter against the slings and arrows of the world – but not against affection. Not Yang's, at least.

Battering ram of sheer personality, she was.

One with teeth, the glowing – no, growing – no, both – bruise at the back of Blake's neck would gladly bear witness to. Truly, it was one of the world's injustices that the Beacon uniform would cover up any evidence of Yang's rightdoing.

So right. Every time Yang's mouth grazed her flesh, it left stardust, and each lingering, luscious lavish of lips was a nova in disguise, and with each starburst across skin that felt more now than ever like the stars blooming on the canvas of the night sky Blake felt more like there was a pattern to them, and surely this must have been how the gods made people into constellations, and Yang was certainly divine enough to do so, and, and, and . . .

. . . and there was always an 'and' with Yang. Other people were kind, sure, other people were beautiful. But Yang was kind _and_ beautiful. She was warm and accepting. She was funny and caring. She was heartfelt and silly and determined and unstoppable and she could do anything she set her mind to, and she listened, and forgave, and triumphed over evil just by existing and sang to the heavens that she was here, she was here, they were all here, and, and, and . . .

And.

And she was kissing Blake, leaving stardust on her skin.

There must have been someone more deserving of miracles than Blake, out there in the wide, wide world. But the way Yang kissed – with her whole body, not just her lips, something desperate and wild and everything Blake had never allowed herself to be – she could almost believe she deserved something good. Something real, really, _really real_ , something that didn't ring empty in the hollows of her heart, someone who'd hold her just like Yang was holding her now.

Yang moved to Blake's lips, one jot of light in the sky at a time, like a thousand hillsat nights watching the stars emerge from behind the black expanse, and finally seeing sunrise. A relief and a disappointment, all at the same time, as she eased into the kiss like flowers ease into apples, a blooming sweetness with seeds for infinitely more contained within it.

Of course, apples didn't usually bite down on Blake's lip when she ate them. Who said there was no improving on nature?

But apples were as quick to go as springtime, and Yang's mouth moved from Blake's in a near reflection of the previous symphonic movement, the only real difference being where she decided to leave the next hickey. Blake, in response, attempted to climb Yang's tree, wrapping her legs and arms alike around her and being glad it wasn't literal, because that was possibly the worst tree-climbing technique in existence.

"We really should have done this a lot sooner than we – pfftt, hee hee." It wasn't just like Blake had been rudely awoken from a very good dream. It wasn't just like Blake had been rudely awoken from a very good dream and realizing that it was because someone was snoring and that she weren't going to be able to go back to sleep. It was just like Blake had been awoken from a really good dream by someone snoring and realizing that she wasn't going to back to sleep, and also, that the snoring had been her.

But Yang was a morning person, and as far as she was concerned "morning" seemed to last to somewhere around 11:30 at night. "What's so funny?" she asked, a tragedy, considering what she wasn't doing.

The realization flooded through Blake like ice in her veins – more specifically, melting strychnine. "I can honestly say that I do not find anything at all funny, right now."

Yang's mouth was a precocious personality, not inclined to obey such authority figures as lawmen, teachers, or even (Blake suspected) Yang's own brain. It pulled a lot of stunts, and lately some of the things it pulled forced Blake to reclassify parts of her body as "stunts" in hopes that things would progress naturally from there. It never, however, did absolutely nothing. Until now.

Her eyes, on the other hand, narrowed. That seemed to say it all.

And then, more laughter. Funeral laughter. The kind that, by all means necessary, needs to be stopped right that moment, and never actually will. Yang's fingers were fluttering more focused, like a butterfly trying to make a hurricane on purpose, and these were not the noises Blake had wanted Yang to make her make.

Any other time, the twinkle in Yang's eyes would have been a lovely sign of a city from a distance, a welcome home. Tonight, at that moment, it was arson. "Blake." Yang's smile slithered like a creation myth gone wrong. "Don't tell me you're ticklish?"

A single sentence, and Blake was embattled. The familiar analysis engine programmed into her by a million missed bullets and a thousand hissed lessons between them rapidly calculated her odds of success given any individual option. There was always a way out. There was always a way out. _There was always a_ -

"There's no right answer to that question, is there?" Blake knew it wouldn't help to hold herself perfectly still. It wasn't as if Yang tracked her by movement. And yet she tried it anyway.

Like a destruction myth gone wrong, the snake returned the sun as Yang beamed brightly. "I'd say they're _all_ right answers!"

Yang's fingers assaulted Blake's sides, and for the first time in living memory, it wasn't just a metaphor.

It was less that Blake's world became the dreaded Palace of Eternal Tickledom – which was the worst thing Blake had ever thought of – and more that Blake's world didn't have Blake in it anymore. She was orbiting it, high in the atmosphere, weightless and uncontrolled, just enough air to keep her alive but also so little she could barely think beyond the bubbles that were forming in her brain.

And, of course, she couldn't stop laughing.

" _Hee ha ha ha_ \- Yang, stop it!" The laughter was a cage and the words were attempting to reach through the bars, and Blake was, oh, an earthquake. "Pfft – don't! No, pff _haha_ , no more!"

Yang often had things of this nature shouted at her when she gave people rides on her bike. "Not really seeing a good reason to stop . . ." To Blake's understanding, she tended to press the gas pedal instead of the brakes when things like that happened.

"I need to breathe!" Blake threw the words like a makeshift grappling hook – even if the lip of the edge seemed utterly impossible to pick out.

"Say uncle Qrow!" Yang's sing-songing voice, though she might vehemently deny such, left a lot to be desired. Like mercy, for example.

"Uncle Qrow!" There were names Blake had been expecting to cry to the heavens after some token resistance. Well, one name. Variations thereof. Point was, Yang's uncle wasn't one of them. A few more seconds and relentless fingers finally became relentful fingers, and Blake figured out that good grammar was the first thing to go.

The laughter was the last.

Somewhere in between the two, Blake lost her already-tremulous grasp on gravity and began falling backwards, only to be caught by Yang – what else was new?

"Think I'll take that as a 'Yes, Yang, I'm very ticklish'." Yang's voice melted like butter and caught just as easily in the heart.

"Dork." Every time Blake's thoughts turned down a pathway, there was a wild giggle blocking their way. Best to take the path of least resistance, or at least wait until she finished giggling in a sea of endorphins to . . .

Yang decided to finish drowning her, depriving her of air with her own lips.

Well.

Only thing to do in response was for Blake to throw her own arms around Yang's neck and cling to her like she was a life-preserver. That, and make sure to use tongue.

It was sweet, and slow, and strong, like even more molasses than bending over to grab books, and it seemed to be infectious. Maybe that wasn't the nicest word to describe one of Yang's kisses with, but Blake sure felt like some sort of syrup, the way everything eased into comfortable sluggishness.

And then, like a seed sprouting into an apple tree, Yang eased Blake back onto the bed they were on, never breaking their liplock. They fell together – they always had and always would. Yang kissed, Blake was coming to realize, like she was performing a trust fall, and she performed trust falls with running starts and swan dives. Or, at least, she did when Blake was there to catch her. And even though it encouraged her, Blake always caught her. Or maybe, secretly, not so secretly, _because_ it encouraged her. Trust was oddly sexy, somehow.

Their positions were reversed, now, of course, but that was all still as true as one plus one being two.

Blake's head came to rest on the pillow, and there was a strong suspicion in her mind that she was about to have a very pleasant dream. It was a dense suspicion, too, with all the heat and pressure being applied to her. It wasn't that Yang was settling down on her, it was that Yang was settling in around her, over her, an unfamiliar sky of perpetual sunsets, all orange, purple, and feelings like a long, long day was, at last, coming to an end.

Hands were wandering. They weren't Blake's. Blake's were holding on, not for their lives, but simply for the sake of not letting go. Proving a point to the universe.

Yang bit. The universe could be pointy back. Blake had no objections to a fair and reasoned discourse.

But hands were still wandering, neither fair nor reasonable, wandering in dark alleys and wooded areas good hands never went alone at night – so it was fantastic each one had the sense to bring a buddy. They'd ended up quite lost, or perhaps that was simply the excuse they planned to use later, somewhere under Blake's skirt, just below Blake's just below, and _lifting-_

Every dastardly deed Blake had ever thought of, killed, buried, made sure to dispose of the evidence, every hint of wickedness emerged from her throat at once in the form of symphonic movement where all the instruments were far too hot and bothered to be out in public.

The music ended as suddenly as it began, enough so that even the sound of needle against record was cut off, and Yang and Blake stopped dancing. An odd club, where the dancers' next move would decide which song would play next, and the DJ seemed to be willing to wait as long as necessary.

"Hello." Blake breathed into the stillness that followed, a word light and heavy as a lead balloon looking for a flame. Someone had to say _something,_ especially since neither pair of lips seemed to be currently occupied, anymore.

"Hey, yourself." Yang was an expert in attaching specific tones to the things she said. Torn stockings, bright, shiny bracelets and neon scarves were carefully, metaphorically placed to accentuate an already-outlandish sound. But this was about the same thing as seeing Yang in a dress back at the school dance: a package deal. The kind of reverence Yang wore couldn't be classified as a simple accessory to her crimes.

For a few bits – beats, but cuter, which was more apt to the events transpiring – there was more silence. Then, there was the sound of Yang's nails scratching down Blake's board. Her belly. From there, with the class's undivided attention, so to speak, she pressed at the inside of Blake's legs. Obligingly, confusedly, as though someone had asked her whether or not water was wet, and might they possibly see some proof, Blake opened up, just a little.

"Something the matter?" Blake attempted to keep her tone as neutral as a man on a tightrope over the pits of hell on a windy day. Windier, the way Yang slowly reached up to brush a single lock of hair aside from her forehead.

"I can control you." The first person to ever discover their Semblance must have sounded like that. Awed, unbelieving, searching their own thoughts for tricks, the slightest hint about where something this fantastic might have come from. Except, if anything, Yang sounded even more amazed than all that. "I can make your body . . . move."

Blake nodded, shallow and a little thick, like a saucer of cream. She'd never thought of herself as something so basically elemental as to be beyond human reckoning, but the way Yang was breathing . . . "Your hands touch me like questions." She didn't know where the words came from. Blake only knew that they were the right ones. "I'll always say yes."

For the space of a paragraph in a novel, Yang looked at Blake as if she were a book of pictures, no letters, attempting to divine some meaning hidden in the thousands of words they represented.

And then Yang smiled like an opening dam, and laughter flowed like a river, wild, free, and refreshing. It bounded off the walls like a flood of endorphin, and deep did it run.

And she smiled like the opening day of a malt shop with a pocket full of allowance, bending to kiss down Blake's torso and sneaking licks of sugar-sweet skin.

And she smiled like opening a chest of treasure, even as she opened the chest of Blake's outfit, each button popping off between teeth, lips, and far too flexible a tongue to be considered proper.

And Blake smiled like the cat who got into the cream, to end imagination with the blade of apt descriptors. "About time you buttoned your lips."

Yang looked up with eyes sparkling like wine, warm like whiskey, heady like vodka, and laughed like she was too tipsy to care who heard. "We both know I've got a big mouth. So it's real good thing you've got two shirts of buttons for me to work with here." A kiss, just at Blake's navel and, well, case in point.

Blake swallowed down her blush, an ability she hadn't known she'd possessed until right that second. Tasted vaguely like green peppers. "And here I figured you'd end up complaining about how much clothing I was wearing."

"Mmm, I'm not really in the business of complaining about stuff." Suddenly, like turning a corner and spying an entire building where there used to be a park, Yang's hand settled on Blake's stomach, and Yang's voice settled somewhere in her groin. "I just . . . take care of the problem." Fingers trailed, slowly, up the course of Blake's torso – between her breasts – up her neck – into the spaces between her thoughts, which grew ever larger – and halted, a slow, sensuous, sinful sort of path that Blake was barely able to compare what she imagined Yang's legs did, the first time she got on a motorcycle.

And if riding a bike felt anything like this, it was no wonder Yang loved getting out on Bumblebee so much.

But Yang didn't hit the ignition immediately. She paused, and so did Blake's heart, brain, lungs, and basically everything except her stomach, which did the kind of excited flip that circuses built shows around. Nervousness seemed unbelievable, and patience even more so, yet Blake had the distinct feeling that Yang was waiting on something to finish heating on the stovetop. Metaphorically speaking.

Then Yang popped the top button of Blake's shirt open, and "boiling" was not nearly intense enough of a word to describe the temperatures involved.

The next button down was quick, like gravity, thrillseeking and the space between buildings, even if Blake felt like she was the one falling, and when Yang moved her finger to the third button – but didn't _open_ it – it was impact. A hot crater.

Blake was already breathing a little shallow. She could only imagine what depth might feel like in this situation.

But then, she didn't have to imagine depth, because Yang was looking further into her eyes than she ever had before, as though she'd been searching for Blake all her life and found her in a stranger's body. "Tell me . . . tell me if you change your mind, okay?" Yang's hand slid over to press again to her heart – Blake supposed it was good someone kept track of her heartbeat. She'd lost track of it somewhere along the way, most likely when it and her thoughts ran away together.

"I won't." Three strikes. Blake was beginning to wonder whether the baseball uniform was a good idea, after all. Even if pinstripes did flatter her figure. "I mean, I will, but . . . I mean, I'm not going to change my mind." She licked her lips, and noted Yang mirroring the maneuver. Perhaps it was symbolic. "This is more than a dream come true for me. This is everything I ever wanted, and everything I thought I'd never have."

Yang's smile was so very bright, photons seemed to cast shadows before it. "Right back at you," she murmured, and maybe there was something to be said for symbolism, after all. She leaned forwards, carefully, trying to squeeze in the places Blake didn't already fit into, like a liquid, like ecstasy, and rested her head in the crook of Blake's neck. "Huh. They really are the same."

"What?" Blake asked, arms slinking around Yang's form and holding her close, because it might have been the only way to prevent the air escaping from her lungs.

"Your pulse and your heart. They sound the same." Yang's hair, midwinter songs in front of the fireplace woven into a tapestry, caressed Blake's body as Yang turned her head to press a soft kiss to Blake's pulse point. "Feel the same. I know they're supposed to and all, but it's just really cool, you know?"

It hit Blake hard at that moment, over and over again – a realization like her double-time heart. She wasn't the only one wearing a persona often enough to give Coco fashionista fits. For as open as Yang was, in action, in dress, in smile, there were still parts of herself covered up - and Yang covering up was the last thing that should be happening tonight.

"You know it's okay, right?" Blake let the words tumble out like a cheerleading squad, hopefully just as peppy and encouraging. "You don't have to hold yourself back."

Devil-may-care. It was a mask, slipshod and ruffled but face-covering nonetheless, that Yang wore every day, which by transitive property meant every day was a costume party for Yang.

"That obvious?" The way Yang's other hand splayed across Blake's back and began coaxing the muscles there to relax seemed to suggest she was trying to apologize. As if she had anything at all she needed to apologize for. "'Course it is. Who am I talking to?"

But masquerades at midnight see faces fall, in more than one sense of the phrase, and beneath lamplight Blake couldn't help but realize that since the only reason to wear a mask was to be someone you weren't. So if the devil didn't care, that meant that Yang almost certainly did. About everything and everyone.

"You're talking to Blake Belladonna, the girl who's been handling whatever you throw at me this entire evening." Ah, yes, she was handling Yang, alright. But there were places to put innuendo – in conversations, in passes down the hallway, in poetry and jokes and heated glances – but oddly enough, it didn't seem as though when she and Yang were about to have sex was one of them, or at least not at the _immediate_ moment. Well, subversion had always been one of Blake's favorite tactics. "And dishing it back, if you'll recall. You really aren't going to break me."

Maybe, possibly, Blake most of all.

"I know I won't break you. And you dishing it back out does have a certain appeal to it." Innuendo had its place, and Yang obviously knew a tad better than Blake where that place was. "It's just, once you throw the punch you're committed to it, right? And . . . I want to take time to appreciate you."

Blake could see it in the way Yang looked at her. Like she'd begun building the rest of her life in her head.

"I'm impressed." Blake had never found herself too capable at being the architect of the day after – too busy burning bridges behind her to be building anything. "You've finally given me an idea I'm not sure I can handle."

There was a brief moment's lapse – not hesitation, so much as the throttle of the engine – and Yang's hand shaped itself, slow motion, around Blake's cheek: a motorcycle hugging a curve. "Find out together?"

With one hand pressing Yang's own against her cheek like pressing a flower to a page, Blake moved upwards, far enough upwards to make Yang carry her part of the way to a sitting position, to participate in other, more exciting hobbies. Like building futures in her head. She'd suddenly taken quite the interest in that one.

What happened after that was a little like placing a pebble at the top of a mountain, looking away, then looking back to see an rockslide. Lips moved like sewing needles, forming a patchwork quilt of tongues and teeth and brushes of the nose. Hands moved from face to hips and then metamorphosed into hands at the back of the thighs, pulling Blake forwards and around like Yang intended to only wear her for the rest of the evening. A gentle push of the hips, water on the beach, became the crashing, rolling surf, bringing the roar of the entire ocean, focused to a single point. A kiss became tongues, became teeth, became bodies and sweat and gentle gasps, Yang's half-a-dress plus leggings and Blake's shoes got thrown off to the side where unimportant things went to stay, there was a feeling like a fuse had been lit and something, sometime, was soon going to explode.

A few moments later, the fizzle of a dud sounded in Blake's ears, and the proceedings paused to realize they didn't have a contingency plan.

Well, not quite a lack of explosives. More like the last moment of a song, where the sudden clarity of silence allows the dancers to realize how intimately close their waltz has become, and they snap apart, holding each others' gazes as though afraid they'd break, beyond repair, if dropped.

Not quite that, either. Yang and Blake separated, instantly, agreed upon, but it was more like the dance floor in reverse after that. A few moment's silence to adjust to the idea, and Blake ducked her head beneath Yang's chin, and was held tightly enough to keep her beating heart under control. Nuzzling was involved on the part of both parties.

"Have I told you lately how gorgeous you are?" Blake hoped that actions spoke louder than words, because there were so many things she wanted to say in that moment, and all she could find were the small of Yang's back and even smaller circles.

"Tell me how good I look, and I'll tell you why you look even better." Yang seemed to have speaking without words down pat, judging by the way her lips moving against the tops of her head felt – even after she was done speaking.

"You sure you want to be putting your lips there?" The question sort of felt, to Blake, like dipping her finger in uncharted waters. Inquisitive exploration by technicality alone. "I definitely appreciate it - don't think I don't. I just . . . well, I never liked getting hair in my mouth. It stands to reason that you wouldn't, either."

"If you think a tiny bit of body hair is going to stop me from licking, biting, teasing, or kissing every single inch of you I can get my mouth on, you must not know me very well." True – reckless disregard for perceived reward and Yang went hand in hand like old friends. Or, hand in hand like Yang's hand and Blake's ears, and scratching, and descriptive language was suddenly quite difficult for Blake. "Especially these bad girls here. You _really_ like it when I touch you here, don't you?"

Blake could really only describe what she was feeling as visiting an aggressive sauna. Sans towel. "Well . . . not _just_ there . . ."

"Hence the whole, lick, bite, and tease every single inch of you stuff." Yang's lips met her faunus ears and exchanged phone numbers, leaving Blake to fret, metaphorically speaking, over what they were supposed to wear on their date. "And kissing, too. _Lots_ of kissing. At this point, nothing's gonna stop me unless you say 'no'."

There were certain types of emphasis best described as not emphasizing at all. Like leaving poor wet girls standing against walls without knees between their legs. Similarly, with just as much previous flirtation and _feeling_ , Blake left her voice purposefully level in tone. "So nothing's gonna stop you, then?"

Yang grinned down at her in a way that made springtime seem wintry. "Sure hope not."

As if rehearsing the big love scene at the climax of a play, she took it from the top, her two lips on connection with Blake's feline qualities leaving seeds of affection that made the blood beneath Blake's skin bloom. Quick as a honeybee's flight, Yang then dipped down to those flowers, licking up the nectar therein with a buzzing sort of glee. Spring was certainly here; Blake could smell it on the breeze – the breath of air from Yang's mouth against her neck that produced giggles like blades of grass over the night sky's landscape.

And then, as though Yang had done it a thousand times before – and if she were as imaginative as Blake had found herself to be, she just might have – she held Blake's wrist up and outwards between the lightest touch of finger and thumb, gently leading her somewhere. Somewhere _good_ , and a bit rainy, judging by the peppered pecks that then landed on the skin of her neck, her breast, her collarbone, her ear, her neck again . . .

Yang could kiss like the rain. Yes. That was it. A spring, or maybe summer rain. Gentle, warm, but thorough, nonetheless. Affection in small batches, a brief break from the sweltering heat, and utterly unexpected.

"So the girl who burned an entire nightclub to the ground using only her hands invites me out dancing." Blake's words followed a slow, steady tempo that Yang's tongue set as the kisses upon her neck slowed and deepened, her hand fully encircling her wrist and tightening. Everything seemed to be slower and steadier now, except for her heart, which seemed to be the hare about things. "Somewhat surprising to find myself in the middle of a waltz."

"Hey. Gimme some credit." Yang's smile was cocky, or half-cocked, or possibly even both, and somehow still seemed sturdier than anything else the world had put out so far. "Even I know that if you're lucky enough to get hold of some fine wine . . . rich . . . decadent . . ." The hottest, deepest, most lingering kisses yet traced up to one of Blake's lower ears between Yang's words, and for all the world it felt to Blake as though she were a girl in a bottle, being constructed like a ship. "You're supposed to savor it."

"Oh, I know you're plenty smart. I've just never seen you take your time on something before." Blake was so very close to some sort of edge that hadn't been there a few moments before that even an unguarded impact of a few stray beams of light might send her toppling into sensory overload – and so she let her eyes flutter shut. "It makes a girl feel . . . special. Wanted." Blake paused a moment. To give her next sentence maximum impact. Definitely not because her brain was too tipsy to think properly, nope, no siree, no way, no how. "Oh, and really _, really_ horny."

The only sign that Yang faltered in her approach was the sudden rush of gasped air across the hollow of Blake's throat. It was, however, a sign the size of the city of lights and lust and risktaking that it gave indication to. "Say again?"

There was, of course, the noted phenomenon of undressing a person using only one's eyes. But this was something new that Blake was trying: a look to undress herself with. "I'm afraid you're going to have to make me."

Another kiss, like all the others. A bit of bliss, like all the others.

Yang had always been making her, anyway – Blake was a work in progress, after all. Barely a sketch when they first met, ink on paper and empty inside, and then Yang gave her colors and definition and a gilded frame she could hang out in when everything was said and done.

But then again, Blake was more words than watercolor, and by many definitions stories were never truly completed until the were read. It was like Blake split into thirds, being kissed the way she was – felt the way she was – _read_ like a novel in its steamiest scenes. Like she was being dissected, analyzed. Held up to literary standards and not found wanting for authorship, despite the tumultuous process the writing had been up to this point.

One hand brushed over Blake's ears almost casually, the other grabbing Blake's wrist and guiding hand to hip, body settling sideways into the touch. A hand of a different, more slender sort entangled itself in Yang's hair.

The first part was Blake's brain, focusing on the details, shelving the little moments once they'd passed like pinning the memories of butterflies beneath the foggy glass of the subconscious. It was the technical skill, the rhythm and meter of each sentence, the proper grammar of the thing. So it kept saying things like, _Yang smells a little bit like wildflowers_.

Teeth bit down on Blake's lower lip, hand making its next brush anything but casual, as another hand crept up Blake's back, insisting on further contact of skin on skin. The hand gripping Yang's waist tightened, the back of its partner gliding down Yang's torso, barely fitting in the space left between them.

The second was her soul, focusing on the characterization, sampling the sounds of reality and mixing them into an entirely new genre of music. It was the symbolism, the messages, the phrasing of the thing. So it kept saying things like, _No. Wildflowers smell a little bit like Yang._

Lips traveled along Blake's jawline, a leg drawing itself up her own to mirror the hand running down her side. A hand squeezed Yang's bicep, and single nail traced the bottom portion of her spine.

Then there was her self, focusing on the feeling, emotional and otherwise, cradled in an embrace strong enough to hold back the ocean and loving enough to make it feel like it didn't want to go anywhere. She was the setting, the scenery, the idea of the thing. So she kept kissing Yang, as if to say, _I love the way she smells_. _The way she is_.

They say some books are written for a the world, some are written for a group, and some very special ones for one specific person. Yang kept reading, and reading, and reading again, as if Blake were her own personal book.

A very unique book: many books had dog ears, but this one . . . well, carefree hands finished writing that sentence for Blake as they scratched, just short of pain like other people might be just short of the horseshoe hitting the pole. "You seem awfully fixated on my ears this evening." Blake had sworn to herself she wouldn't play any more games of saying-this meaning-that, and yet here she was, cooing her appreciation in blatant rebellion against the things she noticed.

Yang nipped at the top of Blake's right kitten ear with the kind of jubilant pride people normally reserved for cresting mountaintops. "Just checking for halos."

"Alright, that was pretty smooth." Blake returned the flavor with twice as much glee and, considering the golden mass she had to fight through, twice the difficulty. Some things were worth the extra effort.

"Yeah, I know it was." Yang's sense of pride might be best summarized as a crooked crown that refused to straighten. "But being serious? I wanna do everything in my power to make sure you feel good about being who you are. Ears and all."

If there was any set of sentences in the world that deserved a kiss, then everything Yang had ever said tied for first place. Not that Blake was a biased judge or anything – at any rate, that was one of the sets, and it was entitled to its proper prize.

Yang kissed back, like a teddy bear attached to a moving wall, an oddly soft but utterly implacable insistence on affection. If that was how Blake died, then so be it - Yang's body pressed like a question, and Blake answered, and they fell backwards together once again, more wild and uncontrolled an approach – more of a Yang approach – than what had come before. Not onto the pillow. Directly towards the headboards.

The noise that Blake's head made upon contact was like nothing but a hammerblow, and her tiny "Ow," right afterwards was unfortunately similar to its squeaky counterpart.

"Oh, Dust, Blakey, I am so sorry!" It was possibly the first time Yang had ever shown any concern for collateral damage. "Aw, geeze. So much for making your ears feel good . . . you okay?"

"Yang, bleeding head wounds are not conducive to good sex." Blake's face matched how she felt – as serious as page 387 of the second Ninjas book. The page with the bikini contest. So, not very serious at all. "I'm kidding. I'm absolutely fine."

"You're sure?" Yang was as yellow as a rubber duck, so perhaps it was apt that she, on occasion, squeaked like one. "We can stop. I can get some ice, or something -"

"I'm coffee beans, remember? Not spun sugar." Blake pressed her hand once more into Yang's hair. Like a hand-knit sweater, but spread out over a large area so more than one person could wear it, except Yang was territorial, so only . . . silly to be thinking along those lines. "We've had sparring sessions that hurt a lot more than that did, and I don't recall ever being too banged up afterwards."

Yang was beginning to calm down. By all technicality, the sun was beginning to cool down. They were not dissimilar sentences. "Yeah, but this isn't supposed to be a sparring match."

Blake thought, maybe, if she tried really hard, she could make her expression look like a sprawling array of lily petals spread out over the bed. At least, in the effective sense. "Isn't it?"

"Oh." All the features on Yang's face gathered together at the center and began plotting nefarious things for the night. "Well, when you put it that way . . ."

_She's so beautiful I can barely stand it._

"Of course, thinking back on it, we usually went up against each other in sparring class anyway, didn't we?" A hand slipped, easily, like playing chords on a guitar after practicing for seven years straight, between Blake's suddenly too-sensitive skin and what little – less and less, it seemed, every moment – she was wearing over it. Blake resolved she'd need to be more careful with her wishes in the future if they were going to be granted so readily. Not all of them would be as satisfactory as this one was turning out to be.

"Had to work off all of our tension somehow, right?" It was a gleaming grin, the kind ships sank to. Not because it was hard and unyielding, something to crack three solid feet of metal on, but because it was so beautifully tempting. A distraction. A siren, most likely their queen, to sink ships without singing a single syllable. "Locked together, matching each other move for move, slamming one person or another into the mat . . . pretty sure I don't need to go on?"

"Oh, absolutely. I've got a very good picture of it in my mind. Mmmm." Blake's clothing was becoming almost as loose as Yang's was still tight – which was bad for a number of reasons. Then again, there was no really bad outcome in play. Blake was only going to lose her opportunity to steer towards the good outcome she personally wanted. "Sometimes, though, when I wasn't up to sparring, I just sat back and watched."

"Enjoying the show, were you?" Yang's voice rumbled, but quietly, like a meteorite landing a good several miles away. It still shook the ground beneath one's feet, of course, but that was to be expected with a party crasher of that sort of magnitude. Perhaps magnitude 7? 8?

"How could I not?" Blake's voice was soft, too, but she would call it more a feather at close range than a rock, far off. Something ticklish and playful. "You're a symphonic movement made visual, Yang. Percussion and violins, concussions and violence – a walking lesson on Music Theory, I swear." A single finger traced up and down Yang's now unmoving arm. Two would have been excessive, all things considered – including, of course, the immediate future. "The rippling muscles were nice, too, I have to admit. It's a wonder every single person in the stands didn't fall in love with you, I remember thinking."

Yang stilled, staring into her eyes, and something in Blake wondered what it might take to make a siren crash into the rocks below. ". . . it might sound sort of weird, but . . ." This wouldn't be called floundering, despite the recent impact. Not even recovering. More like reflection. More like composing a strategy for the next go-round. "I hoped you were watching me, whenever I sparred and you weren't standing across from me." There was a wide variety of noises Yang often made – some of which Blake was hoping to hear more than others, at that point – but chuckling at herself was surprisingly not high on the list. It happened at that point, though. "Let's be honest -"

"Les-bi-an-ish?" Oh, goodness. The puns were getting instinctual. That was a harbinger if Blake had ever ominously gazed at one.

"Okay, that's a good one." A single lily floating, untouched, in the middle of a hurricane. Perhaps a bit too poetic, but it was slowly beginning to embody Yang's ability to go with the flow. Not a lily. A lilac. "But, uh, no, I was actually hoping you were looking at me even when we were throwing punches at each other. Besides, you know, how you usually watch people when you're fighting them. Um . . . you know what I mean, right?"

"I understand completely." Through experience, even. Years worth of experience, the way all the time that wasn't Blake seemed to slow like the last bit of ketchup in the bottle every time the world zoomed in on what she and Yang were doing together. "And yes. I watched you. Like a movie. Honestly speaking, the staging and the backgrounds were amateuerish at best, but that lead performer? I could drown in her."

Yang brought her mouth close enough to kiss Blake – and then, didn't kiss her. Like snatching a book out of her hands, right down to the irrational sense of sexual frustration the size of Beacon. "I'd do anything for my fans." Her eyes glittered like gemstones at the top of enchanted towers, and Blake's first instinct was to check the room for traps. "All they have to do is ask."

Two could play at . . . well. Two _had_ been playing at, for some time. They didn't seem to be able to stop themselves. "I thought about how strong your arms were. About how they might feel wrapped around my body, refusing to let go." It was better than Blake had ever imagined. "I thought about the movements of your legs, and wondered how far someone with that kind of fancy footwork might go to get a leg up." Farther than she'd ever dreamed – but never quite far enough to satisfy her. "I watched your smile, all teeth and eager tongue, and, well, I'm sure you can guess." Their lips met, and Blake supposed they could each pretend it was the other person who had fallen into the temptation first. An emblem of the evening.

"I dunno." Yang's mind must constantly be doing flips to be able to stick the landing so frequently after they kissed. Blake, for her part, couldn't think with an instruction manual on how to. Then again, she supposed Yang did have a tad more practice in talking than she did. "Sort of hard to narrow down the _thousands_ of possibilities."

"Fair." Blake had almost gotten used to the butterflies in her stomach – but every time she was just getting them settled, mischievous Yang had to set them free to flit around her body. So annoying, and by annoying Blake meant exhilarating. "But I think most of all, what I thought about when I watched you?" Hands hooked under thighs like bendable diamond, all shine and hardness and desire to put on the ears and make stay there. "Glynda's right."

Yang's blink was nigh-audible. "Wait, wha -"

Talking about sparring. That was as far as Yang got before Blake swapped their positions with all the subtlety and grace of an ursa minor attempting to pitch a tent. Significantly more effectiveness, however.

"You need to learn how to not drop your guard." The words dripped like blood from Blake's fingers – and on that note, a quick mental check, and no, her claws had not pierced Yang's skin, that was very good.

"You know, I always thought I'd make a really good supervillain." Not only was it a casual tone, it was said in a situation most people would never use a casual tone in. A two-for-one deal, with a very attractive saleswoman to boot. "Not like, the planning and the mwa ha ha and that kind of thing, but I think I'd be pretty good at general mayhem. Burning things. Punching stuff."

"You do have the seductive wiles for it." Blake didn't quite understand the phrase "washboard abs". Yang had the texture down, certainly, but running her claws even as lightly as she was over the creases of Yang's skin made Blake feel not cleaner, but absolutely filthy in all the best ways.

"Exactly." There was a hitch in Yang's breathing in the middle of the word, and it felt sort of like accidentally opening the door without knocking while she was changing. An intrusion, a temptation, a gap in Yang's defenses, and something decidedly erotic."Kind of jumped the gun on that, though – here I am, making the biggest mistake a supervillain can make." Yang grinned into the next sentence like a lean against a locker. "Letting them talk."

"Allowing me to come to my senses was your _second_ mistake." Blake's mouth curled, a twirling lasso – not in form, but in function. Designed to hide the process of capture behind a seemingly needless flourish. "Your _first_ mistake was being too exceptionally gorgeous for me to _possibly_ resist." Quick as a whip, Blake leaned down and snared Yang's lips with her own, and led her in all the directions she wanted to go.

Some part of her mind that sounded far too much like Yang tried to say "Yee-haw", and Blake kissed Yang a little harder before realizing that wasn't actually going to do anything to shut the voice up. At least it felt nice.

Real nice.

Yang's breath was more than hitching as they separated – Blake would dare to call it panting, if painting weren't a more appropriate, if less literal term. Or maybe something more solid. A sculpture of heated breaths and tiny noises. "In my defense," Yang murmured, her voice a mosh pit in all but volume, like little shoves between the taller, stronger breaths, "It's a lot more fun when they fight back."

"Oh, certainly." Blake could be artistic, too. Childish as it might have been, she was growing quite fond of finger-painting. Guess who was the canvas. "To be fair to you, I'm still having trouble deciding which one of us to root for, myself."

Yang giggled like a million mirrored shards– but not separate, not sharp. Colorful, together. Stained glass. "So. World conquest. You up for it? You can tell me what to punch and I can punch it really hard. Just us against Remnant." Then, suddenly, like teleportation, Yang was somewhere else. Her body was still there, certainly, but her brain was obviously on a planet so distant it could look at Remnant in a telescope and see what it was a Remnant of. "You, me, and those beautiful crescent moon eyes of yours . . ."

Blake had sort of been debating whether they had better have gone on a few dates first before jumping in like this, but that sentence closed the case once and for all. This saved time. If they'd been in a restaurant, for example, when Yang had inevitably said _that_ sentence in _that_ particular tone, Blake would have instantly called for the check and they'd have ended up right back here at any rate. "All the better to match the twinkling night sky in your irises." Blake, as she was wont to do, picked a lock, one of Yang's, and wound it round her finger like it was at all necessary to keep Yang looking at her. "But as to your offer, I'm afraid I must decline. I've already set my sights on 'conquering' something else." Blake didn't have fangs – some faunus did. She wasn't those faunus. It that moment, however, her lips narrowed into a slightly-open smirk, she envied their bicuspids. "You're not getting out of this one quite that easily."

"Come on, Blake. We _just_ talked about how neither of us could resist a challenge." Yang's eyes, stars and all, roved over Blake's body in such a lazy manner she had to have been putting effort into it. "Keep smiling like that and you might find I've got some fight left in me."

"Come on, Yang." Blake sometimes fancied herself an overworked intern with a a pair of legs in a pencil skirt in the cubicle across the hall. Right now, that concept was the only way to explain why Blake's brain made a rush job of it; imitating Yang's words and tone of voice was hardly the height of witticisms. "I have you completely at my mercy. I can do _anything I want,_ and there isn't a thing you can do to stop me." Like a theater major attending a job interview, Blake dropped the dramatics. "Seductive, slightly sadistic supervillainess aside, though? What I really want to do is what you want me to do to you. So, what kinds of 'tender mercies' were you hoping for?"

"Oh!" Yang's manner flipped, instantly, almost noisily, like a lightswitch. Except instead of turning out the lights, flipping this switch turned a different light on to replace the first. "Okay, uh, so . . . I want you everywhere, I mean, how could I not, but start up high. My lips, my hair, cheeks, nose, general face stuff. Neck and ears sound really nice, and you already know about my shoulders. Oh, and here too." Yang placed two fingers from each of her hands up to her collarbones and uh, huh, sure, she definitely wasn't pressing her breasts together with her elbows on purpose, right. "I know I don't exactly have Schnee-worthy shoulders, but . . ."

"I prefer a little meat on my collarbones." Would licking her lips be overdoing it? Licking her lips would probably be overdoing it. Again, her own, or Yang's. "Everything above or around the neckline for the immediate moment, then?"

Yang sent a sly look, the same way tsunamis send water. "Well, yeah, but, you know, I'll understand if you just can't stop yourself from exploring a little."

"My hands do seem to have a mind of their own around you." No they didn't. In fact, they didn't have anything extra at all. They were missing something. They lacked their usual restraint, because Blake saw fit to withhold it from them. "Meanwhile, I seem to get stuck with your mind when I'm around you."

Yang laughed again, harder this time – hard enough for Blake to feel it rock her hips. Something something supervillains something something talking too much, Blake would listen to sound advice sometime when she wasn't feeling sound and vice: Yang's laugh at her very core. "But I love sharing my thoughts with you!" Yang's definition of a scholarly mask apparently included blinking too much and shaking her head vaguely at nothing. It was more effective than it should have been. "That's why all the face stuff: it's all closer to my brain, so it's all more receptive. It's just science."

Ah, science. Chemistry, then, or anatomy? No, there was something better to say in this scenario. "Well, that certainly makes a lot of sense. Is that why your smile is so brilliant, then? It reflects your thoughts?"

Yang blushed like she was considering calling for a check at a restaurant. "Sheesh, Blake." She covered her cheeks with her hands, like putting a tarp over an explosion for all its effectiveness. Yang had said the word _sheesh_ , for goodness' sake. "Sort of putting me on the spot here, you know?"

"Aw, don't get modest on me now." Blake leaned to Yang's ear and held her spot there for the span of heartbeat – well, three heartbeats, the way her own was pounding. "We still have so much we need to accomplish." A single nip along a lobe, a breath so tiny it might not even be called a gasp, and she unbent. Blake wasn't sure whether she was attempting to send Yang into a tizzy or stop herself from losing rationality, but either goal, she felt, was a noble one. "And you know how I like to take my time on these things."

"You're going to kill me, aren't you?" Yang said, and the smile on her face made the statement an unlikely bedfellow. Somewhat likelier, considering the relationship Blake and Yang now shared, but still.

"In a manner of speaking . . ." Blake let the sentence hang in the air like the illusion that the bombs weren't actually falling. "No. Just torture."

"Any chance of you taking it easy on me?" The look Yang asked this question under, like a shield made of molten rock, would have melted any potential weapon. Including the heart. "I hear I have a really nice smile, if that'd help persuade you . . ."

But Blake's heart had been melted beyond retrieval by Yang a long, long time ago, and she'd always believed in working with what she had. Of course, what she had right now was a beautiful, willing girl pinned beneath her hips, so perhaps she wasn't in as dire straits as she'd first believed. "Hmm . . ." Blake pretended to think. It was an odd concept to her, about the same as "pretending to breathe", but she pulled it off for the sake of the look on her partner's face. "Nah." Blake pulled a Yang, or rather, pushed a Yang, as the case evidently was, pressing her knee directly against Yang's sensitivites with just enough force not to hurt. Not physically, at least.

Yang's mouth opened in a silent gasp, and then stretched in a noisy smile. "Good."

There was only one response Blake could make to that, and though it might have involved her lips, it wasn't really anything like a sentence. Her lips fought Yang's, a sparring match very unlike all their others – and yet very much like all their other spars, as stimulating as it was.

They kissed like live performances of favorite music, like the perfect wave, like trick or treating under a full moon, like the best movie of the year, like parks and sunsets and every single thing that was once-in-a-lifetime, and yet, could happen over and over again.

But even with a world's worth of wisdom and wit to consider, there was still more to Yang than just a too-fast tongue. She was a neck like an ivory clocktower, bitten and tongued to mark the hours. She was hair that could daylight savings time tips on conservation, basked in and ran through with fingers curious about the world. She was shoulders like bridges from here to everything Blake had ever wanted, traversed in ways secret and unknowable. She was cheeks and chin and forehead and pulse and earlobe and all this above the collarbones alone. Yang had asked for Blake to consider all of her, and so she did, setting explosive charges along the foundations of her entire being and listening for the booming groans.

_Her skin tastes almost as good as her lips._

Blake had never in her entire life felt as close to anyone as she did to Yang, right then, hands and lips everywhere she'd – and she, as well- had wanted them to be. It was a literally true statement, but it also happened to be the perfect description for their hearts fighting each other while their mouths worked as distractions. They were a jigsaw puzzle of infinite complexity and only two pieces, and figuring out how they stuck together was rapidly becoming the picture-perfect tableau at the center of everything, now that the corner pieces were starting to fit.

Yang was fond of punching through brick walls instead of just using the door, on occasion. That was how her sudden movement away and grab of Blake's shoulders felt.

"Blake, I need you to do me a really huge favor right now!" Yang's voice was like her stride: she was tall enough, speaking in the metaphorical sense, that she had to take half-steps for other people to keep up. Now, however, she was running very far, very fast, and had Blake's equally metaphorical grip in the kind of lock it would take to stymie a master thief.

"O – okay. Anything." She really meant the anything too, which brought the sudden possibility of syrup and sprinkles to a table that had thus far been completely vanilla. Sugar highs were a thing, and so were sugar crashes, but for Yang she'd give far more than just her dessert.

Yang seemed just as exhausted as if her sprint had been a physical one, if only for a panting moment. "Okay . . . Blake . . . I'm not gonna lie . . . I've had dreams about this. Really detailed dreams, like, movies you _live_ in." She held a hand up, and it turned out it wasn't sugar Blake needed to be swallowing, but her next semi-sweet, semi-sarcastic retort. "So, like, if this just is another dream?"

"Don't wake you up?" Blake hazarded the guess. In books, cliches might have been trite and overdone, but in real life there was a certain power for a lover of literature to be able to follow narrative conventions.

" _Immediately_ wake me up." If Yang looked any more serious, she'd be Weiss, and that wasn't who Blake wanted to be talking to at this precise moment. " _Immediately_. That way I can _immediately_ do this with you for real."

Blake held back most of her laughter – nothing she'd read ever indicated that uncontrolled giggling was anything sexy. Not from her, at least. "Well, I surmise there's only one way to check if you're asleep or not." Two fingers formed into a clawish shape, the head of a snake perhaps, and slithered their way between the bedsheets and Yang's hindquarters -

Yang _actually_ "eep!"'d when she "bit."

"Seem pretty awake to me," Blake smiled a smile even she would define as "smug" and looked at her fingers as if inspecting them for defects. One had to be certain of these things, lest one suddenly snap into nonexistence as their lovers woke up from their slumber. "Unless you want me to pinch you again?"

Hesitation looked remarkably good on Yang when it was just about the only thing she was wearing. "Depends on exactly where you're pinching."

Blake bent low and close, like a blanket with ill intentions, spreading her body once more over Yang's. "Tell me which nook and cranny," her voice dripped like rose-scented perfume, and Blake wasn't quite sure how she knew what mixture to use, "And I'll make sure to inspect it _very thoroughly_."

Yang made a little noise. Like breaking open a bell and releasing all the sounds it could ever make at once, at the same time, as a singular, soft tinkling. " . . . wow." The word was as dense as a neutron star and fifty times brighter, and the feeling behind it was as palpable as a solar flare.

Blake bent and weighed down onto, into, Yang's lips, like a cork on a glass bottle, pressing, trying to hold that feeling in for as long as she possibly could. Always, always, always, fireflies needed to be allowed to fly away, or they'd just die entirely, but if Blake could just keep the little bit of light in the darkness alive by her heart a moment more, maybe it would ignite her glow, too.

_It isn't too much to ask, is it?_ With all the effort and all the ineffectuality of pretending to fly as a small child, Blake tried to make her mouth ask the questions without sound. _Just one eternity longer?_

_Not at all._ Faith, trust, and hair that glowed like Dust, Yang responded, in any case.

Wrestling with the idea of inevitability wasn't so bad with Yang as a tag-team partner.

It was the air, in the end, that made them separate. Not the desperate need for it, like the need for sleep, that Blake was getting better and better at fighting off like she was trying to read one of her novels, but a scent like catnip and wildflowers had a child, one excitedly rushing to meet Blake with warm hugs and laughter and the idea that maybe she deserved it. It was either separate or lose herself entirely, and the night was still too young to be intoxicated, let alone intoxicating.

So Blake unfurled slowly, like rewinding time, to examine the choices she'd made. And who had chosen her.

Fabric once skintight had shifted, and rumpled. Breathing was coming in staggered breaths. Hair, immaculate in its conception, delivery, and raising, now left messy and careless like freedom and boxcars. A smile as wide as the universe. Eyes with a glinting that gold would have no choice but to court, if amber didn't reach them first.

Yang.

Yang gave Blake a feeling. Yang gave Blake a lot of feelings, but one in particular was sitting in front of her like a tray full of cupcakes, and that was the feeling that Yang was like a tray full of cupcakes. It would be gluttonous of her to take a second dessert so quickly, certainly – and yet her eyes kept tracing the edge of the silver platter like a circling shark on a sugar high, anxious, predatory, flirting with death from the other end of the potential threesome.

All Blake had to do was peel off the wrapper. All she had to do was lick the icing. A touch here, a breath there, and the rest of the evening would belong to her and her alone – Yang would just be along for the ride.

It was a half-baked idea, but the heat rolling off Yang in waves was rapidly competing the job.

"So, not that I really mind, but are you done undressing me with your eyes, yet?" The question was as sweet and innocent as arsenic and lace, and Yang looked for all the world like the guiltiest party imaginable. Blake tended to imagine she was very, _very_ guilty.

"Oh. Sorry about that." Blake wasn't sorry at all, and they both knew it. If she were any less sorry, she and Yang wouldn't be having this conversation – they'd be doing something entirely different with their mouths. "I guess it fits well enough that the only thing that could possibly distract me from you is . . . you." _If nothing else, it's keeping in with tonight's themes._

"Oh, you don't have to worry about being distracted." Yang's tone was carefully careless, like a kimono worn too wide with one shoulder slipping off, but missing the heat beneath her words would be like missing the flush on shown skin. "It's just that I figured if we were going to be undressing me with anything, it would be your fingers."

Blake tried for a voice like warm massage oils felt, and made a soft keening noise to express her "disappointment". Anything but, really. Nothing to be disappointed in for miles around. "You're not going to let me use my teeth?"

"Only if you promise no biting." There was a rasp at the edge of Yang's voice that Blake had thought her reading materials had been making up. _Dust_. "And by no biting, I mean lots of biting."

"I do, on occasion, enjoy tasting of my darker instincts. Amongst other things." Blake dragged her eyes over Yang's form like, well, like the tips of her fingers. Or like all her stray thoughts. "It's been a while since I've had a chance to sink my fangs into unwitting prey." As in, never, but that wasn't very sexy talk.

Yang giggled, a whine of excitement on an out-of-control jackhammer, and suddenly brightened. Less a lightbulb and more a searchlight landing upon a thief, as if the golden hair wouldn't give her silhouette away. "Holy heck, this is actually happening."

"If you need more pinching . . ." Blake bared her teeth, in preparation for her teeth to bare, bending down to grab something between her lips. She'd figure out exactly what when she got there.

"One for every year." There were photo-manipulation programs that couldn't give people as radiant an expression as the one on Yang's face. "So let's get to unwrapping your present!"

"And my future, I hope." Blake's lips touched the fabric of Yang's top for a portion of a second so small it might be called a first. It wasn't a kiss, anymore than a brief shimmy of hips while standing in the area coincidentally called the 'dance floor' was a dance, but it was the vow of popping and locking sometime very soon.

"Ooh, I like that one!" If Yang's expression lit up like a lantern in a storm at Blake's words, what she turned into when Blake began sucking the top portion of her breast could only be described as burning down the docks. "Oh. I like _that_ one too."

It wasn't a particularly complicated process, but then again, neither was shooting a gun, really. Unless you were doing it _right_. The only thing separating Blake from the average sniper – besides, statistically speaking, the extra pair of ears – was technique. Battle for others may have been a series of readies, singular aims, and fires like metal meteors, but for a Huntress it was a graceful, glowing series of steps planned out in advance only about half the time. There were a million variables to keep track of in a real fight, if it was a good day. Finger placement was just as important as the movement of the arms, as was the placement of the next enemy in line. The weight of a weapon was not only a burden, but a tool – as were a weapon's firing mechanisms, ammo type, and even basic shape and form. _Everything_ was a way to shoot another bullet, or something else to be shot at. Still, what all the heat and metal boiled down to was, even at its most complicated, there was solace to take in that the next step was usually still either aim or fire.

Blake applying her mouth to Yang's torso was just another matter of memorizing potential triggers.

She liked the noises Yang made a lot better than gunshots, though.

And as with maintenance on any weapon, the process of stripping only truly began once Blake had memorized the initial schematics – and the way Yang whined when teeth finally bit down onto her top, Blake was beginning to understand Ruby's near fetishism for the objects. Bringing that top down, however – bringing it up would mean literally fighting tooth and nail against Yang's hair, and Blake didn't think she was going to be the person to break the mane event's ten-year-Long winning streak – bringing it down got off to, if not a rocky start, an immediate speed bump when Yang's hands shot up like she was still wearing her gauntlets to cover her . . . gauntlets.

Blake wasn't sure quite how to feel, but she shook the metaphorical tree, waiting to see what fruits fell down. "This may be the first time I've ever seen you being modest."

"Not shy, really. More like making sure you don't sneak any peeks before the job's done." It wasn't so much that Yang and mischief went hand in hand as much as Yang kept giving mischief piggyback rides. Only someone who was running and very, very confident in their chances at winning Red Rover let their grin grow that wide. "Sort of like making sure Ruby's done her homework before letting her have any cookies."

"Tease." Blake's teeth gripped the yellow band before her once more – if they happened to scrape a little against Yang's skin in the process, who could say it wasn't an accident? - and continued with her work. If it could be called "work."

Part of being a competent and capable student of Beacon's lessons was turning disadvantages and setbacks into opportunities, and the top catching on Yang's hips or the jut of her knee or any number of miscellaneous body parts was an opportunity nothing short of literally golden. Her hands stayed out of it – the one time they might actually be helpful, they apparently decided they just wanted to watch, instead – meaning that in order to undo those snags, Blake had to be very judicious (and _very_ merciless) with regards to how she used her tongue, her lips, her teeth, and even her nose on one occasion. Any tracker worth their salt and perhaps some of their pepper could have followed the resulting trail of markings, red splotches, and wetness, and Yang wasn't half a bad tracker herself – the roll of her back into Blake's mouth on those occasions followed that path over and over again.

Blake had never experienced one before, true, but she felt like this was the kind of night that left people strutting in the morning.

Eventually – it would have been done sooner, but Blake created a couple false snags, just to draw attention off her trail – the top was bottomed, removed from Yang's feet with Blake's teeth and tossed over her shoulder. Not Blake's shoulder. Yang's. It seemed more entertaining that way. "Well, then." The words popped up from within Blake like carefree days, dish soap, and makeshift bubble wands from forks and a bit of hope. "Cookies?"

It was appropriate that Yang's laugh sounded like popping bubbles. "Ta-da!" Yang spread her arms wide, and Blake couldn't help following the movement with her eyes. Not of the arms. Of other things. Who in their right mind would focus on arms in _this_ situation? "What do you think?"

She knew she was staring, in much the same way as one knows they're falling from orbit. Mostly by the heat, but partially from the sense of some event much greater than one's self approaching faster than anyone could ever believe. What could possibly compare to a view to end the world with?

But then, Blake had asked herself that before. One time, when she was so little as to not understand what was wrong with Remnant, Blake went to a museum – woefully lacking in Faunus art, which was what was wrong with Remnant, but that was another story. There was a painting there, of a hyperdelic sunset, that could only be described as otherworldly. It was a photorealistic approximation of a photo that could never be taken, the final hours of a day that did not exist. Blake was transfixed by it, and even at that young age, knew she was looking at something very special. The sign next to it said "Do Not Touch", but she had to. Just a little. Just a fingertip. Just to check and see if, maybe, that painting really was a window to someplace different from Remnant.

She compared that moment in her memory, colored by nostalgia and the optimism of youth, to the masterpiece lying before her, and decided that she'd never really known art until just this moment.

And Yang didn't even have her pants off yet.

That was probably the moment when it really hit her. Through some combination of skill, flirtation, and probably mostly sheer luck, Blake had the most beautiful girl in all of Remnant all to herself. Absolutely breathtaking.

That all was what passed through Blake's mind. What actually came out of her mouth was: "Holy hell, Yang."

"You can touch, promise." Yang sat up like the sunrise, speaking casually, as if she wasn't saying things that applied a backspin to Blake's entire world. Only she held that kind of power. "Would you believe they're actually not done growing yet? They've slowed down a lot, but every once in a while I realize I've gained, like, an eighth of an inch and, welp, that's that for _those_ shirts. Sort of why I gave up on bras entirely."

"Holy _hell_ , Yang." Blake cupped Yang's – wow – Yang's breasts with the cautious _need_ of someone faced with a Do Not Touch sign, though judging by the sudden intake of breath she was actually more encouraged than discouraged to continue the action.

"Mmm . . .careful." Yang's lazy smile was warm enough to discourage a dragon from trying to brave the flames. "They're sort of sensitive."

" _ **Holy hell**_ , Yang." Finding more to say than that would have been an exercise in misplaced priorities.

Pointlessness, too, because there was no way Blake could find the right words to describe what she was feeling. The emotions were easy – she was excited, curious, maybe even whimsical – but what Blake was literally feeling, at that moment, seemed to defy description. Soft and sweet as seven-layer cake, sure. Full and warm, slightly heavy, like carrying a tropical storm, absolutely. Firm to the touch but with some give, like a trampoline, it was all true.

But the problem was that none of it was _enough_.

They were so much more than that, as vibrant as a panorama of Blake's entire life, large, and they felt like they anchored the world to Blake somehow, that with the turn of a wrist or the flick of a finger, all that was would respond to her whims. How could something so perfect exist in a world as black-hearted as this, let alone its twin? Why would -

"Uh, Blake?" It was a tone to bend steel with. Not because it was particularly strong or heated or anything like that, but simply because it would decide to scrunch up on its own to save itself the embarrassment. "Not that I really mind or anything, but you do remember there are other parts of me besides my boobs, right?"

"Er . . ." Blake removed her hands gingerly, as if to match the red that she'd been caught sticking her hands in. And, she was certain, her heating face. "So there are." Other people were caught with their hands in cookie jars. Blake Belladonna was caught just eating a cookie. She and indulgence got on like an iceberg and the desert, in that not only were they anathema to each other, but existed thousands of miles apart. "I am so sorry."

"Well, that makes one of us, I guess." Yang smirked, like the world's prettiest Venus Flytrap, and Blake was certain she had been caught. "Hey, come on, it's not your fault. After all, those are clearly the _breast_ parts of me."

Anyone would classify a phrase like that as a march by an opposing army, even if it was one with smiles on their faces. "I can't argue with that." Blake didn't disagree with "anyone." However, she did take offense to the implications. Why should an invading force necessarily lead to war? Why weren't tea parties and simple conversation ever an option? "But . . . I'm sure you'll agree that these cheese-grater abdominals of yours are _abs_ olutely the _grate_ -est part of you." And overt sexuality in the form of palms pushed up stomachs like leading questions. That was a good deterrent to escalating warfare, too, Blake figured.

"Now you're speaking my language." There was a thrum to Yang's voice, like plucking a guitar string the size of the universe, with much more in the way of melody. "Body language."

Blake kissed her, as fast she could be allowed - merely "lingering" instead of "languid" - and tried to slip a few more sentences of Yang's language in the meantime. "We'll just call it revenge for the ear affixiation thing."

"Halos!" Yang lit a candle and pretended that could be called indignation.

"She says, unironically, with her golden hair framing her face like the opening heavens." Blake's own face was perpetually emerging from darkness. So much for symbolism, she supposed. "Still, you're probably right. Which means, in all technicality, I still owe you one." Eyelashes fluttered, like an invitation back into the shadows for some time away from the world. "Anything in particular you'd like to request of me?"

"Well . . ." Yang nursed the word like a favored drink, drawing her tongue over its rim. "I know it sounds heartless of me to ask you for the shirt off your back, but . . ."

"Only if you take it off." The words snapped up from Blake's soul so quickly she was surprised that her aura didn't flare on their way up. "Then I might even be tempted to throw in the jacket."

There were three steps involved in the ensuing process. There was a smile, seeing snow for the first time. There was a wink, an envoy of something more fundamentally true than what meager portions of reality Blake could perceive. There was a feeling on Blake's skin, wings grown, ribbons rearranged from chains to hold her down to instruments of freedom. And then Blake was there, slightly truer and much, much warmer than before, even though part of how she'd presented herself had been literally peeled away.

Blake hadn't realized how sweaty they'd both gotten. Hard to focus on the little details like that.

"Huh. Sort of expecting basic black, but you really rock the bandage look." Yang shot Blake a glance designed to incapacitate, by hook, crook, or sultry look. "Then again, you'd look hot in anything, so why not bring the mummy back into fashion?"

Blake leaned back into the scoff hiding the laughter, like a favorite resting place in the shadiest corner of the room. "If it helps, my panties are about as dark and featureless as the uncaring void."

"Shhhh. Spoilers!" Cheer and good humor seemed to be Yang's usual reaction to the uncaring void, which had the marvelous side effect of causing it to care. "No, but seriously, you think you could teach me how to do that? Usually I wear stuff that's already sort of tight, but sometimes a girl wants some extra support, you know?"

They were actually having this conversation? Blake and Yang were actually having this conversation, right here, right now. It wouldn't have been any better at any other time, but still. Best to roll with the punches, Blake supposed. "I'd love to. As long as that's not the only thing I'm teaching you tonight. . . ?"

Yang walked her fingers up Blake's arm, showing a remarkable ability to taunt her with only two fingers. Idly, Blake wondered what else she could do with only two fingers. "Don't tell me these gorgeous guns of yours weren't the only thing you had hidden up your sleeve?"

"Take off my stockings and you'll find out where I keep my _best_ tricks at." The words sizzled on Blake's tongue like a sparkler, like celebrations in the downtime between her breathing, and maybe that was how Yang tasted? Closer.

It was certainly how Yang _looked_ , all fire and brimstone, hold the pain and suffering, and maybe add in an extra dash of temptation, as she bent down much lower than strictly necessary and . . .

Mm.

Taking off stockings was supposed to be a slow process, something to busy yourself with while the roast cooked, or whatever suburban people who didn't have to strike at the shadows' shadows with their very soul did in their free time. The novels Blake had read waxed and waned on the process, spending more ink and paper on the removal of fabric than had been required of the whole of fashion magazines in the past several years – entire pages, like scoring notes, dedicated to the sweet silent hum that bounced around in the heroine's heady head as nails ran along the sheen over thighs. Not to mention that, put bluntly, stockings were fragile, as were bank accounts, and paying Beacon back for a pair of ripped stockings would be embarrassing to a degree that would be very easy to name the moment that Yang wasn't whipping off Blake's own like they were a winter jacket and it was July 23rd.

Trust the girl who threw herself through space with shotgun blasts to throw someone over a cliff, catch them at the bottom, and kiss them in the adrenaline rush. And for it all to work.

Ah, but worse. Yang was saving all the delicacy, care, and romance-novel-style seductive measures for the trip back up. Yang's mouth had never harmed a soul, but it could move in ways that made kindness seem sinful. Blake had never taken Yang for a leg-girl, but at this point, she would not be surprised. Or saddened. Or anything, really, except aroused to whatever degree paying for ripped stockings would be embarrassing to. Her hands were cradling (cat's cradling, Blake would never say out loud) Blake's leg, one at her calf and one at her upper thigh, and lips like uncovering a secret of the universe moving upwards traced the line of lightning flowing between them, the hint of teeth serving as the occasional spark.

It was actually quite appropriate. The lower the girl who could set herself on fire strayed – literally or otherwise - the closer Blake came to boiling over.

_Everything she is and does is beautiful._

And then, just one sideways glance and a tempted tongue away from something as obscene as Blake had ever hoped for happening, Yang stopped the process entirely. "Hmm." She straightened, like the scribbling at the edge of the page resolving itself into a dream journal. "Sleeves have gorgeous guns . . . stockings have glamorous gams . . ." Yang winked at her, to the sound of a whistling kettle. Somewhere. Blake was certain of it. "Still not seeing any tricks, kitten."

People sometimes spoke of their hearts racing. Blake was moderately certain hers was winning. She could hear it in her human ears, now. "Well, maybe if you hadn't been _distracting_ me . . ."

"Aw, I finally got you to blush," Yang's fingers danced a discrete waltz down Blake's cheek, and cupped her chin. "Black and white and red all over."

"You can read me like a newspaper, huh?" Blake let her mouth work as a scab for her brain, which was out on an extended smoke break. Not a smoking break. A smoke break. It was on fire.

"Nah, not a newspaper." The way Yang looked up at her made Blake feel both larger and smaller than she ever had before. "More like . . . everything's been black and white until now, and all of a sudden here you are. Vibrant. Colorful. _Gorgeous_."

That made up Blake's mind for her – she needed to capture Yang's lips immediately, or else the world's most perfect young woman would say something else that sweet and her heart would explode. Couldn't have that.

They broke apart, like crumbling cookies, leaving chocolate chips and fond memories as debris behind them. "Anyone ever told you that you kiss like my favorite song?" The words had barely escaped Yang before her face put out a reward for information on their capture. "Okay, wait, no, that makes absolutely no sense for like, three different reasons."

"You've had ample opportunity to take the words right out of my mouth, it seems." And the seams right out of Blake's words, come to that. Proper sentences and clever comebacks never seemed to have proper protocol when it came to Yang Xiao Long – always falling apart. "Give them and the heart you stole back, and I won't have to inform the authorities." As evidenced.

As she did in the face of any other sort of authority, Yang only laughed. "Alright, come on. Sit up straight. I know we've been listening to the same music group for a really long time, but you need to turn around so we can put a stop to it."

After a pause long enough to be called a paaaaaaauuuuuse, Blake did so. Blake's body did so. Her brain stayed right where it was. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You know." Yang's hand touched the small of Blake's back, and only in that moment did she realize how jealous some of her body parts had been getting. "Gotta get rid of the band-ages."

It was a good thing Blake's brain hadn't turned around, because that pun knocked it for the proverbial loop. ". . . I am legitimately impressed."

"Oh, you think that's impressive?" Then there was the press of bodies together, like Yang was tattooing her heartbeat onto Blake's skin. "I'm still just getting you warmed up."

"If you want me to be honest?" Blake leaned back into Yang like, well, like she was a beanbag chair. Not everything could be elegant, but some things could be very nice. "It's hard to believe I could get any warmer."

"Nah, it's easy. You just gotta use your imagination." Soft as dandelion fluff getting its revenge, Yang's lips landed once more on Blake's neck, and her hands wrapped around Blake's wrappings with explosions of matter and wind equally as soft-spoken. "And I'll make all your dreams come true."

Yang's hands, like will-o-wisps playing in the snow, trailed up and down the sides of Blake's body. Yang's hands, so practiced with throttles and shotgun shells and knuckles in the sides of faces, slipped fingers as cautious and loving and defense-bypassing as a mother's lecture beneath Blake's bindings. Yang's hands, as warm and bright as the only lantern left on the face of the planet, began the slow process of unraveling that might just leave Blake unraveled too.

Yang's hands – her whole body, but for various very good reasons, her hands were what Blake was focusing on – was as smooth as glass, but warm, like the beachfront sands glass was birthed from. They were free from cuts, callouses, and blemishes of any sort, but Blake wasn't such a fool as to believe Yang hadn't worked her body very, very hard in any case. Yang was a pearl, not a pebble.

And then there was what her mouth was doing. Which, really, was a sentence that could have been appended onto any situation. But still.

"You're undoing my bandages from now on." For as much as her voice sounded like a canary hanging upside down and wondering why the world looks different today, Blake was swimming in the sea of certainty.

"Anything for you." With Yang's lips so close to Blake's ear, each word was a kiss – except, of course, more literally than usual. " _Everything_ for you."

Yang's palm – as if red Dust came up to the surface and cheerfully said "hello" before exploding all over everything - spread out over Blake's left breast, and even through the bandages _screw the bandages I have claws and certainly Yang's strong enough to rip through what's stopping her nothing's stopping her just burn them off she can do whatever she wants and_ -

Sometimes Blake's thoughts ran away with her. Deep breaths. Deep as the deep blue sea. It'd take that much water to put out this fire. Honestly, it was less "running away with" and more "been kidnapped by".

"Looks like I'm not the only one who's sort of sensitive." Yang's voice, breathy as it was, seemed to be trying for "ghosting", but even in this sugar-high state Blake could perceive the excited child beneath the bedsheet.

It was at that moment that Blake realized that her brain liked to distract her with interesting rational thoughts so it could tell her body to do interesting irrational things. It was the only logical explanation as to why she suddenly found herself turned sharply around, one hand at Yang's own breast, the other in her hair, and Yang moaning into her mouth, quite enthusiastically returning the favor.

Everything else that was good in Blake's life had run out some time ago; luck and love and even that last milkshake, all gone, all used up. But she and Yang just kept happening.

And so did Yang's hands. Over and over again. They were events unto themselves, and the night was as full of them as what they were: whispered secrets, lovemaking, hidden glances, stars and starlight and eclipses. They were Blake and Yang's relationship, newly formed, given form, unhurried but insistent, heated and flirtatious, rambling on and on about this tangent or that, but always coming back to the point where, with some work, things would change.

Then, with a sudden feeling of leaves falling from a belladonna, they did, the bandages loose enough to be cast aside like so much cotton fabric. The kiss ended by mutual agreement and no further discussion, as Yang pulled back, stumping a lifetime bookworm with an expression that was utterly unreadable. But focused, for certain. So focused, in fact, that Blake had to bat down her ancestral urge to bat at laser pointers.

It was the only urge she had to bat down, though. She'd expected a need to cover up – but under a stare that might be mildly indicated as "discerning" Blake felt no shame. That was the magic of what Yang did and said – how she made people believe they were worth just as much as she said they were.

Still, Blake felt like she was expected to say something to the occasion. It wasn't every day she dropped her guard, after all. A heartfelt speech seemed like too much, more banter seemed too flippant . . .

. . . eh, why not. "Ta-da."

Yang reached once more, but it seemed as though the potential anonymity offered by the bandage was the only thing allowing her to do so fearlessly. Even so, she touched, squeezed a little, and Blake breathed out gently as though it were simple hydraulics. "Blake." Yang may have talked on and on about Blake being the more artistic of them, but that single word, in that tone of voice, put every masterpiece in every museum to shame. Yang did more with that one word to make Blake feel singularly beautiful than a year's worth of painted portraits.

But it was the look on her face that really sold at auction. The look on her face was like a nervous, unaccustomed, breathtaking entrance to a humongous party, games and dancing and exhilaration and a sense that maybe, just maybe, the night possibly wouldn't come to an end after all. If only the school dance could have been like that – and maybe, upon reflection, it could have been, with the right person. "Wow." Oh, and, also, music loud enough that it was difficult to concentrate on anything anyone was saying. That too. "So, uh . . . my day just got about a million times better. _Wow_."

"Yours too?" Apparently, Blake had spent enough time around Yang to develop a system to respond to quips even when most of her brain was otherwise distracted. It was the only explanation as to how she could still be coherent when something felt this good. "What a coincidence."

"Blake, I don't think you understand." Reverence, held tense, like an organ's highest note. Yang gave her body the appreciation Blake would have saved for a balcony overlooking the world. "You are so amazing that I have to hearken upon the old and deep slang to even begin to describe it. Seriously. kitten, you're the _bomb_."

Blake could die happy, now. But not without a parting shot. "I'm not so sure. I have to say, if we're trying to determine which one of us is the real bombshell, there's no comparison to be made." It was good, Blake decided, that she had to pause to compose herself at that moment. Besides Yang's explorations giving her a feeling like she was made out of clay and slowly being formed into a museum piece, the moment without words really added something to the delivery. "It'd be like comparing apples to . . . watermelons."

Without another word, as though 'watermelons' was a post-hypnotic suggestion, Yang's head dropped into Blake's cleavage, and she began laughing hysterically. Blake tried not to enjoy the slightly vibrant sensation. She failed. "I _like_ apples!"

The quipping subroutine in Blake's brain encountered a fatal error and had to shut down. Desperately, like taking an exam she'd forgotten to study for, Blake began falling towards, more than looking for, any particular response. "And . . . apples like you." No. No, no, no, no, no. Well, yes, but _no._

And then Yang laughed some more, and, alright, maybe yes after all. "Hope they like me enough to forgive me if I sneak a few nibbles?"

Blake breathed in, watching Yang's eyes watch the rise of her chest. Oh, she was doomed. Yes, both of them. "I don't believe they'd mind that at all." Minding was possibly the furthest thing from Blake's mind. Most everything was the furthest thing from Blake's mind. In fact, the next few moments might have been considered meditation – breathing exercises and an attempt to be completely still for an elongated period of time and, mostly, a clearing of the head.

"Radical." Something in Yang's smile suggested a mousetrap, and as teeth closed down sudden, sharp, and deadly on Blake's left breast, she suddenly felt very much unlike her usual catty self.

Then Yang bit the other breast, and all Blake's thoughts and feelings came rushing back in with such speed that they produced a sound. "Ah!"

Yang released her, drawing back just enough to let Blake feel hot breath against her chest – definitely a dragon faunus – followed by the warm salve that was her tongue – maybe the mythical salamander, instead. Blake's neck was next, that same tongue a series of torches in a slow, winding walk over the slope of her pulse, like a funeral procession in honor of her modesty and innocence.

Blake had never been happier to read an obituary in her entire life.

It was a cycle, really – something like a phoenix. Death by fire, heat, and certainty, and rebirth as something bigger, better, and more efficiently plumed, as Yang's lips once more made contact with her own. Blake's world was expanded by inches every time Yang kissed her, nudged her, smiled at her, the horizon stretching just a little further away, unnoticeable, every time they touched. Like growing up. Unaware, until one day Blake looked around to find herself twenty feet tall – just tall enough to kiss Yang back.

"You know, you really need to wear more revealing stuff." Yang's smirk had been implying as such for the past couple hours, now, but it was nice that the rest of her mouth was quite literally hot on its trail. "It's not nearly as much fun when no one's gonna see where I bit you."

"No one except you." Blake was already thoroughly buzzed at this point, she was certain – but what could one more drink hurt? "But if you really believe it's such a problem, maybe you could help me with the 'less clothing' thing?" Alright, perhaps that was one drink too many – even moving to sit on her knees and off of Yang's lap – she could _almost_ remember getting into it in the first place - Blake was suddenly much less steady on her metaphorical feet.

"I like the way you think." Yang was very much like the strawberry sunrises she loved so much. Deceptively pretty, all primary colors and cheerful attitude, and then she went down burning and hit harder than a freight train carrying three thousand bottles of wine. Then everything was somewhat fuzzy, very warm, a bit musical, and, hey, where did Blake's skirt go? "Hmm. I dunno, kitten. From where I'm sitting, it sure looks like that lace you've got on cares an awful lot."

"Even the uncaring void carries some constellations." And to think, earlier that day Blake had cursed herself for forgetting to do the laundry. She'd have to apologize to her past self, later. "I wouldn't mind turning around, if you wanted a better view."

"Mmm. Best view in the world, probably." Yang's hands crept, slowly, around the back of Blake's legs like a fire trying to hide beneath wooden logs. "But nah. I think we can safely that I've done plenty enough in the way of sightseeing as it is. Besides, I've always been more of a hands-on kind of girl." There was a kiss at Blake's navel at the end of it all. Of course. Couldn't forget the tiny umbrella.

"In case everything that's happened this evening hasn't made it as obvious as a thigh between the legs, I'm not exactly a stranger to getting my hands dirty, myself." But Blake didn't feel dirty, even as a thumb brushed under Yang's breast, even with the gasp. Not really. No one could feel dirty for playing in the fresh-fallen snow.

Even if they did end up leaving tracks everywhere.

"Woah." Yang's palms slid over Blake's flanks, and it was more comforting than anything, really. Comfortable. Like silken lingerie. Something intimate that hugged to her form, but also made her feel like she was sexy, desirable. "You really do have the perfect posterior. I mean, I knew it was great to look at, but . . ." Yang's eyebrows waggled, and Blake was struck by the unfortunate suspicion that she was beginning to find the sight erotic. " _Butt_."

Trying to roll her eyes at that moment was like when Blake tried to rub her belly and pat her head at the same time. Except that someone else was doing the rubbing, and that definitely wasn't her belly. Still, she managed the impossible task. "I'm glad my tail meets with your approval." Yang pulled, just a little, like a coquettish question with an attached offer of some steam, and Blake could only gasp as an involuntary response. "Your very, very frequent and _very_ thorough approval, I've noticed."

"Oh my gosh, it's actually heart-shaped." Yang had used that exact same tone of voice the first time she tried pumpkin pie. For some reason, Blake felt inordinately proud. "Your butt loves me, Blake!"

Blake let the laughter proceed unhindered, and then prepared to salvage something romantic out of something that ridiculous. She felt like she'd need the practice for Heartswarming Day, and possibly every other day of the year. "Absolutely. Every bit and butt of me loves you from the tips of my kitty ears to the taps of my feline feet." Blake smiled down at Yang in such a way as to emphasize the love her mouth felt above the rest of her body. As if there wasn't enough of that sort of thing being planned on in the future. "Even though you're the biggest goofball I've ever met."

That smirk Yang wore was either a friend to keep close or else an enemy to keep closer, but either way, Blake didn't think it was anywhere near close enough at that moment. "I think you mean _because_ I'm the biggest goofball you've ever met?"

"You know what?" Blake kissed Yang's nose, casual quick, like she'd been doing it for weeks now. In her head, in a manner of speaking, in metaphorical terms, she supposed she had been. All the better to distract her lovely partner from the pair of hands slowly slithering up her torso. "You're absolutely right." . . . ah, why not, at this point? Yang wasn't the only one who could be a bit of a goofball when they wanted to be. "The fact that you have the loveliest pair of breasts I've ever seen in my entire life certainly helps, though."

"So I'm not the only one who's been staring, huh?" Look who was talking. Yang could do more with one lingering look than most people could do with their hands and an entire evening free. But Blake, unfortunately, had to settle for fingers, wrists, enthusiasm, and sensitive areas. Like, of course, Yang's boobs. " _Ooh_!" What Yang's voice could do was, quite possibly, beyond the realm of human achievement.

"I'll admit 'staring' is probably too mild a term, but at least I was covert about it. You were practically copping a feel with your eyes." And speaking of copping a feel, those noises Yang was making were absolutely obscene. "This might sound a tad ridiculous, but these feel almost like marshmallows. Just a bit less springy." Blake's mouth came within centimeters of the tip of Yang's breast almost before she'd considered the idea, and yes, much less springy – much more summery, much like heatstroke and sweat. "I wonder if they taste like marshmallows, too?"

Yang looked surprised. People who first won the lottery and then were told they'd been elected as Most Beautiful Person of the Year looked surprised. The two were not entirely dissimilar. Either way, Yang brought herself under as much control as she ever did with admittedly impressive speed. "Well, this is it, then. This is how I die. Tell everyone I love that this was exactly the way I wanted to go _oo_ _ **o**_ **oo** _ **oo**_ ooo _oo_ _ **oo-ah**_!"

Blake released her prisoner with a smack that she hoped sounded different to Yang, because "wet noodles hitting the wall" was not what she'd been going for. "Yang." She'd just have to make up for it with her voice, all honey and cream and other messy, sweet things. "How lewd."

Yang didn't reply. That alone spoke volumes.

It was as easy to get lost in Yang's body as it was easy to get lost in one's hometown after getting a bout of amnesia. Everything Blake did, each nip at shoulderblades and every bit of white flesh painted pink with her tongue and every somewhat clumsy embrace or slip of fingers, was something else in her mind saying _This seems familiar; haven't we been here before?_ And Blake would always respond _Well, yes, but the scenery is so lovely, and I can't quite remember anything clearly with all these distractions_.

No, no. No. Yang wasn't the distraction. Yang was what Blake had always been distracted _from_. Blake wasn't forgetting anything; she was remembering, remembering excitement and what first impressions were like and even how to breathe, because every wrong step and evil deed had stolen a bit of life from her lungs, hollowed her out, and every brush of lips and long drag of tongue was bringing her back home, back to life, back to clearheadedness, a world without oxygen deprivation. Yang was a breath of fresh air.

Yang was every breath of fresh air, actually. And quickly. She was a whirlwind.

_She's so much more than I deserve._

From above Blake, Yang's voice rang like a choir of angels. "So, I've gotta say, this is a pretty awesome view." Falling angels, most likely. Succubi. _Sex_.

Blake released flush skin from between her lips, and considered that with the new evidence provided by Yang's groan at the sensation, parting was simply sweet, hold the sorrow. "It makes sense you'd say that." Another kiss to the top of Yang's breast, and Blake regretted the decision not to have made lipstick part of her daily regimen and routine. She'd have to remedy that the next time they got an empty room all to themselves. "It's probably common to all performers to find most beautiful the sight of an audience enraptured. On the edge of their seats. Breathing baited, and heavy with anticipation." A quick nip of the teeth at the tip, as carefully calculated and slightly rough as Blake's tone of voice and word choice alike. "Waiting to hear . . . singing."

"Huh. I know normally you're supposed to tell someone to break a leg for good luck." Yang's hand cupped Blake's chin like she was completing the circuit her brain had started, judging by the sparks. What would happen next, Blake could see coming from a million miles away, and made no effort to dodge. "Don't suppose we could substitute with smooching?"

"And here I'd heard black cats were supposed to be _bad_ luck." Or, possibly, they simply absorbed the luck from other people and released it at their leisure. Blake certainly felt like the luckiest girl in the world as Yang moved in closer, heedless of her words, and might have even said so, but . . .

But it was time to perform. They kissed, like the point in musical theory where jazz met big band, and proceeded to play their little hearts out. Standing ovation. Rave reviews. Rumors of naughty occurrences back in the dressing rooms.

"So, weird question." Words rolled like wheels from Yang's mouth, carrying an idea between them. Not that it was too heavy to move on its own, of course – Yang just seemed to want to show off her wheel-making prowess. "Are your lips made of Dust? Because I swear I explode every time you kiss me."

Blake made Yang burst one last tine – the space between her collarbone and the rise of she shoulder would be the detonator – and then looked straight into equally explosive eyes. "Heeding my words about testing pickup lines?"

"Depends." Yang smirked, like the world was on fire and she was holding a can of gasoline. "Did it work?"

"Maybe." Of course. "But remember: Dust needs something to set it off before it _really_ gets dangerous." Blake made a show of moving her tongue from her mouth to Yang's pulse, the kind of show that popped up in the seediest part of town and had stars with names like "Snowflake" and "Daisy Dream", which could only mean that the way she moved her tongue up Yang's pulse was like a routine on a pole. "Are you gonna _burn_ for me, Yang?"

Yang's gaze upon her own made Blake think of radical scientific ideas – surely she'd just discovered the focal point, the center of the universe, the one still and sure thing upon which all the rest of the chaos orbited into order. And very hot, too. "I think I can manage that."

"Good to hear. Now let's get you out of these wet clothes." Blake's voice was bright and hopeful as a birthday candle, able to survey the entire restaurant from its view from atop its sugary seven-layer world.

"Uh, beg pardon?" Yang was visibly wrestling with that idea – apparently, by only using her facial muscles. Her left eyebrow was performing quite the grapple.

"They're practically dripping." Blake's eyes, maybe, dripping down Yang's body in the form of a glance so significant it was oil. Like she was attempting to peel a grape with her pupils. "Well, some of them, at least."

Yang's features brightened, which tended to happen when oils met birthday candles. Or when Yang did anything, really. Such was her Semblance. "Oh, well, yeah." Yang settled back on the bed like, well, like that was what beds were made for. "True."

Blake snagged one more kiss between her giggles, as though swiping one last hors d'oeuvre while leaving a party she'd never mention going to in polite company, and started drawing pictures with her mouth on Yang's torso like she was trying to convince her to come home with her.

Well, not drawing pictures, precisely, or even finger-painting. More like sculpting, really. There were some amazing sculptures out there, precious things of marble, strength and absolute form crafted from sheer persuasion, more than anything. The impossible could happen – something so much stronger and more lasting than a human could ever be, convinced to change with only the subtlest, smallest strikes, and never the slightest trace of a raised voice or any hesitation on the part of either party. The greatest artists, it was said, didn't truly sculpt. The only saw the sculpture, trapped within the block of marble sitting before them, and worked to set its truest self free.

Undressing Yang – or even getting ready to do so - felt a bit like carving marble.

Except better, because marble didn't tend to gasp or groan when artists lingered on certain anatomical areas for overlong. Plus, Blake looked over her handiwork, well, mouthwork, marble wasn't nearly this chiseled. Ba-dum, tish.

"It hasn't happened yet, but I think I have a plan for what I'll do if anyone asks me what 'art' is in the future." Blake eased the button on Yang's shorts undone, a movement that, _coincidentally,_ required her to press her wrist firmly against the area just below it and apply a goodly amount of pressure. "I'm just going to point at you and let the evidence speak for itself."

"Sure you shouldn't show off your poetry instead?" Yang kissed her way up Blake's stomach in between words, her hands circling around to flank her flank, and suddenly Blake couldn't quite remember why retreat and surrender were normally considered bad things. "Or your cutie-patootie booty?"

The entirety of Blake's life had led up to that moment. In all technicality. But even speaking in technical terms, it was something of an anticlimax. "I think you should take it as a symbol of how much I adore you that we're still going to do stuff after you say something like that."

"Aw, you're really gonna judge me on what my mouth says when the rest of me . . ." Yang's chuckle sounded like the crink of wrapping paper, and heavens only knew what gift could be waiting inside. "Speaks for itself?"

Blake didn't have to bother pretending she was annoyed, that time. Not because she was genuinely annoyed, or anything like that, just because sometimes letting Yang know she was adorable beforehand made the payback all the sweeter. "Just for that, I'm doing this last part _slowly_."

And she did do so slowly, as slowly as the wait between setting the pot and hearing it boil, and Blake was proud of that fact, proud she didn't look until she was done. Yang's little twitch when Blake's teeth bit into fabric made that task surprisingly difficult, after all. Like "not having more than one cookie" kind of difficult. Especially when they were as warm and heavenly-smelling as, as . . .

As.

The shorts were down. And off. And completely cast from Blake's mind, in much the same way as electrons are cast from molecules. The speed of lightning, and utterly changing the context and meaning of what they have left behind. Because Yang was . . . as . . .

. . . as.

Yang was . . . _as_ . . . a lovely flower, dripping with morning dew, a fragrant yadda yadda yadda with a trimmed, but not completely shaven so-and-so, smelled super nice and probably tasted good too – it was honestly quite lovely, but what was really important was what it represented. And seeing Yang's womanhood, out on display like a gorgeous floral arrangement, meant that . . .

"You go commando." Blake didn't phrase it as a question. She wasn't that good of an actor. "Hmm. Hello."

"Did you just say 'hello' to my vagina?" Yang was grinning her trademark crooked grin – not that Blake could actually see it. But she knew. Though, again, with relativity in play, it might just be the rest of the world that was off-kilter.

"I just figured I should get to know a person before sticking my tongue in her mouth." On the one hand, that was probably the wrong thing to say. On the other, there probably wasn't a right thing to say, so it wasn't as if Blake had a chance of salvaging things in the first place.

Yang's body shook, like the moments before the dangerous science experiment went wrong, unleashing a horrifying monstrosity upon an unsuspecting populace. A noise like an inexperienced growl, too happy to really do its job properly, was the first crack in the glass tank, and it hit Blake's brain that A) Yang was, for the first time since she'd met her, attempting to restrain her laughter, and B) the way Yang's thighs vibrated against her ears felt far, far better than it had any right to. "Blake." More cracks drifted down – Yang was beginning to crack up. "Blakey. I love you. So, so very much."

Rolling with it. That was half of what Blake did around Yang, anyhow. "Oh, you think you love me now?" Leaning in close enough to let Yang feel the air in her whispers against sensitive skin – absolutely. Wrapping her arms around Yang's hips to keep her in place – check. Not humming appreciatively at the corded muscle she found there – less successful, but two out of three wasn't bad. "You just wait until I get _done_ with you."

" _So much_." There was so much naked need in those two words that if Yang hadn't already been just as naked, she soon would have been. Whether by her own hands or Blake's own teeth . . . it really depended on who got there first.

But it was Blake's brain that got there first, instead, tapping her on the shoulder and bringing attention to something just before she opened up her mouth to respond. It always had been, of course – Yang's kisses were loving ambushes long before she'd ever actually kissed Blake, daydreams waiting around the corner of every thought Blake had, like a jungle creature obsessed with Blake's scent, waiting for lowered guards or dropped inhibitions. The slightest deviation from a day's journey meant getting lost in territory both familiar and strange.

Which was fine – fun – the problem was that Blake kept forgetting to send postcards back home, so to speak.

Blake looked up to Yang. Then, with the realization that postcards weren't good enough after such a long absence, straightened up to look her in the eye, presenting herself as a care package. "You'll have to forgive me for the bad timing of this interruption . . . but I've just realized something."

For a brief moment, stretched out painfully, like the space between the doctor drawing out the needle and plunging it in, Yang only looked at her in confusion. And then the needle slid in, quite painlessly, all things considered, and the tilt of Yang's head alone was like the ultimate in vaccination technology. "We can still stop, if you need to. I don't mind. Really."

"I don't want to stop. I just need to . . . pause for a moment. To say something." They'd been talking too much already this evening, part of Blake's brain thought, but no, the rest outnumbered it, and despite where it had gotten her so far, Blake was still dedicated to the idea of democracy. Best to go ahead and say it. "It might just be because I haven't had much practice, yet, but I have been remiss in my affections. Well, not the affections themselves, obviously. What I mean is . . ." Blake set about collecting herself. There were a lot less pieces than she thought there were going to be. Maybe there always had been. "You've done nothing all evening but tell me that you love me, and I can't remember a single time I've come out and said the same to you instead of dancing around it with witticisms and a casual disregard for any type of actual good conversation."

"I mean . . ." In terms of dancing around things, Yang was a grinder. Sexual, sure, but the point was that in most cases she preferred to dance _through_ them and enjoy the feeling of friction. "For one thing, I love the way you talk, so don't try and pretend it's actually some kind of hidden caveat in your complete package."

"Thank you." For about a million different things Blake hoped she could make perfectly clear without saying them – there was so many better things to do then spend time making lists. "You get what I'm saying, though, right?"

"Well, _I've_ got a lot to say about that, so, uh, just lemme get it out real quick, alrighty? Bear with me." The way Yang said it, Blake half-expected the sands of the hourglass to simply stop flowing; she expected the universe itself to stop and take notice of her sitting up a little straighter. Anything for the girl, Blake was certain, the whole thing was made for. "I know it was kind of a big part of how we confessed to each other that I wasn't able to tell you felt the same way about me that I felt about you, but . . . I can tell now. Now that you've said it, it's so obvious to me. Every time you tease me with your words or with your tongue, every time you look me in the eye, every time you stroke my arms, every time you kiss me . . ." Her eyes flittered down to Blake's lips, once, twice like moths to the brightest light in the world, and yes, absolutely, Yang could stop talking for a moment and just kiss her if she wanted, that was perfectly fine, that felt _perfectly_ good. "You're living that love for me now, and I can see it so clearly. That means way, way more to me than you just speaking up about it." If a ship could stay steady despite the ocean's waves, they'd have to call it the Xiao Long Smile. "You don't have to say it for me to know that it's true."

Blake traced the kiss they'd just shared – not with her fingers, or her tongue, but with her mind. It was a vivid enough path for even imagination to follow. A short story, one might say. "Alright. Even so." Blake rubbed her nose against Yang's own, because, oh, because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. "I love you, too, Yang. Now, where were we?"

"Hmm. Can't quite remember. Kind of got distracted by this really pretty girl giving me butterfly kisses." Lots of people's smiles made other people's hearts do flips. But Yang's smile made Blake's stick the landing. Nothing else she knew of could claim that honor. "But if I had to guess, I think maybe you were just about to ravish me with your tongue?"

"Maybe at first. But now, just a second." Blake's eyes dragged over the entirety of Yang's form, slow and easy, like kitten's claws, like silken nightgowns, like the realization that what she had just said was a pun, how about that. "Sorry to say, I seem to be getting rather distracted myself."

"Ah-ha. You like what you see, huh?" Like any superhero in disguise, Yang projected casual confidence and a larger-than-life grin, and like any superhero in disguise, it was absolutely transparent to anyone who knew her. For some folks, it was the glasses, for others it was the hair, and for Yang it was the nervous tongue over her bottom lip and the slight clench of the fingers.

She was actually sort of cute when she was nervous.

Blake would have probably taken notice of all those things anyway, but the fact that her pupils couldn't stop darting, drinking, everywhere they could, like every inch of Yang was a different bar, winery, or illegal rave, made missing any specific mix near-impossible. It also made thinking, focusing, and breathing near impossible, as well, but by this point that almost went without saying. "Hmm. Well, I mean, yes. Absolutely." She reigned in her rebellious eyes by focusing on Yang's own, which was a lot like finding a ship's way in a storm by pointing it at the nearest iceberg, except warmer. "I'm simply having some difficulty coming up with how I'll make note of tonight's proceedings in my journal."

"Well . . ." Yang relaxed visibly. Everything she did, she did visibly. Blake, of all people, would know, even if she doubted Yang did. "Instead of saying I look steamy or sultry or something, you could simply say I stole your speech away."

"We'll go with that. All of it, actually. I like the rhythm of it." Blake always had a fondness for jazz. Improvisation and structure, all in the same rhythm. If anything was like Yang . . . Yang was, but jazz was a very close second, in Blake's musical opinion. "Besides, everything that was coming to my mind involved the word smorgasbord."

Without any warning except retrospect, Yang was suddenly kissing her again, hand at hip and hand at spine, and there were a lot of things on Blake's mind, but 'smorgasbord' was not one of them. She'd never understood the thrill some people were seeking until tonight, when Yang shared so much of herself with her, and now she could only call herself a skydiver discarding their parachute.

The landing strategy was falling into Yang, rather than onto her. It had been working so far.

The hand on her hip moved like a magic potion, sparkling and shimmering and mostly just defying gravity as it slid up to the space between her breast and her collar, and Blake reeled. She didn't reel backwards, even if the kiss was the equivalent of a drive-by with a tank and a paint balloon; she reeled in, all too aware of the dangers of using herself as bait and hoping desperately that everything that could go wrong would. And with a mouth full of fangs and an earlobe hanging right there, like a dangling bell, how could anyone be expected not to ring it, Blake would make sure that every little thing turned out just the wrong way.

Tender flesh rolled between teeth, all that talk about sinking fangs into unwitting prey coming back and settling in like they planned to stay a while. Yang gasped, something strangled – no, choked – crowded out, it probably was, by the other noises attempting to push out from her throat like they'd been stuck in class all day and Blake's humming was the bell before freedom. Fingers tangled in Blake's hair with so much confidence they could only be working to hide their sudden clumsy footfalls. Not that Blake felt she could mind, really. If there was the slightest breeze of justice hiding in the winds of chance, then failing immortality, Blake would get to die to a noise like Yang's gasping, a musical style so new and unique it made what the kids were dancing to today seem as passe as trenchcoats and longbottoms.

Musical styles. That was it. Blake had been dancing – not dancing around, but dancing to – the answer all this time.

_Yang tastes like jazz sounds._

"What are you thinking about?" The words came almost unbidden, as if the universe itself were watching the proceedings, attracted to a mind whose workings it could not figure out. But Blake knew the truth – knew that she was projecting her own feelings on the whole of existence. And yet, the words came almost unbidden.

"Thinking I might wanna get myself a journal." Yang spoke with all the serious clang of a cell door making a very good effort against the sponge cake in its way.

"Mmm. You'll probably need to hide it away." Blake fluttered her lashes like peacock feathers in the breeze, all brazen pride and attempt to attract. Yang was too smart for reverse psychology, but she knew how to play along. At least, that was what Blake was banking on. "If you're going to write about what I think you're going to write about, I might want to sneak a glance."

"Only one?" If Yang asked that question any more cheekily, she'd grow a second smile.

"I expect it won't take me too long to memorize the contents. Especially if you write with your usual tact." Blake raised her eyes, and one finger, as if to check the wind and spy the future on the horizon. "The first entry, on the first page. 'Dear Diary . . . Jackpot.'"

Yang laughed, and Blake had to check and see if her arms had actually wrapped around her – they hadn't. The only girl she knew whose laughter felt like warm hugs in strong arms, safe and sound, and Blake had her all to herself. "Dear Diary . . . I've got some _wicked_ claw marks up and down my back from earlier this evening. The healing factor's trying to get rid of 'em, but I'm trying to make sure they stick around for as looooong as I can. Why would I do that? Well, I'm glad you asked me that question!"

Blake laughed as well, and desperately wished for it to sound as huggy as Yang's own had. The girl deserved laughter, and hugs, and – why not? - more kissing.

She was a stronger wave, brighter, faster, but strikingly more solid, a wave and a particle both. She was a photonic resonance and Blake was infected by her light, the drawing of her arms around her neck and up to scratch her ears, the bumps and brushes of her nose, the accelerated breathing Blake could feel in Yang's chest and her own, the space between the staccato rhythms of her heartbeat . . .

Yang had personal space issues. Not that she didn't like people touching her or being near her; in fact, it was just the opposite. She had issues with the _concept_ of personal space. A blood feud, one might call it.

Maybe that was the reason that Yang chose that time to dart down and clamp her teeth on Blake's nipple nearly hard enough to draw blood.

Blake welcomed the pain like a dissonant note on a piano, not something to be tightened into proper tune but something to incorporate into the melody. Something unique, to give conflict to the narrative, to make the harmonies all the sweeter. There was pleasure to be found beneath the pain, if only one stopped to listen.

Which was all just a really fancy way of saying, "I really like it when you bite me."

"Good." Yang bit again, and Blake forgot to breathe – and remembered again, with a gasp. "Really good." It was understandable why; talking seemed so far beyond Yang that her teeth had to substitute where her tongue lacked, and, oh, suction was getting involved now.

"Mmm. Right there, and I promise you I'll melt in your hands." As if Blake wasn't going to anyway. Something about frozen hearts and thawing, sure, but when it came down to it, Yang was basically very enthusiastic magma poured into a hole shaped like a supermodel. Melting, one way or the other, was inevitable.

Yang worked – played, really, by the sound of the giggles – her way up Blake's neck and to her lips. "Aw, but the fun's just getting started. Don't tell me you're already gearing up to get going?"

"You have a point." Blake had a talent for understatement – which was, in and of itself, an understatement. Point was, Yang had several points, and each one of them tended to make Blake's back arch into them like a bridge desperate for somebody to cross it. "After all, we have so much we still have to do, don't we?" Blake stretched, presenting herself with all the feigned uncertainty and miraculous nature of a card trick, and watched Yang's eyes applaud. "I don't suppose you have any ideas?"

There was a smile like an unsheathed sword at the tender forefront of Yang's lips, and teeth like the sword's bite. The other points. "Eh, I've got a couple. In fact, I've put a lot of thought into it, and I've decided that you should walk around naked all the time."

"No reason for it." Blake countered the thrust – though in a battle of mouths, teeth and tongue, steamy looks in the eye were probably cheating. "People would still be staring at you."

Yang rewarded her for her quick wit with soft lips on softer skin – Blake decided in that moment that directing her to her throat was a very good decision, and reinforced that decision with a palm placed on the back of her head. "I can almost taste your heartbeat on my tongue." Apparently, Yang liked her heartbeats fast.

"I can't say much for flattery." Blake breathed the words, rather than speaking them. If Yang was going to take her breath away, she might as well get more than empty air for her efforts. "But I can promise you that if you keep saying things like that, you'll get _everywhere_."

"Yeah, but there's really only one place I'm _interested_ in, right now . . ." Emphasizing that word in particular was like sprinkling diamond dust on the edge of a sword. Flashy, deadly, and entirely overkill.

In the coming days, Blake would, on occasion, without much in the way of actual malice (she could only ever afford the generic brand on a student's budget, save special occasions), ask herself over and over: how. Her ears were designed to hear things coming. They were sensitive to sound. They swiveled when they heard approaches. _How did Yang's hand creep up on them_?

But then again, it wasn't as if Blake could really _complain_ about a feeling like a three-hour-long hot shower compressed into about five minutes of fingernails and gentle exploration. Especially not when Yang insisted on compressing the feeling of washing her back into a scant few inches of skin on the pulse of her neck. Leave it to her partner to surprise her in the bath.

Her and Yang in the shower. That was good. That was _good_.

But those were thoughts for the future. In the there and then, Yang's hand was at Blake's breast, locking all her thoughts up in tiny boxes and telling her she could have them back later. Just as soon as Yang was done finding out what noises she could make, using Blake as an instrument. They were shredding noises – not like an electric guitar, but in that every groan and gasp of air came out sharply separated from each other, ragged at the edges, cut off abruptly.

"Yang . . ." Except that one. It had come through relatively unscathed. Things involving Yang somehow always did.

Yang's mouth moved a lazy line from Blake's neck to her breast, like a waterfall made of warm honey. Or maybe that was her hair – but it was probably her mouth, judging by the buzzing, black and yellow noise that seemed to be welling up from somewhere within Blake's chest. All the while, Yang's hand upon her other breast worked a series of incredibly death-defying stunts in tandem with the hand upon her head. A pulling sensation at the tip – a kneading of the outside – a press, another pull – her index finger drawing a little heart on the top of it.

Wrapping her arms around Yang felt a little bit like finishing a humongous buffet. It was an odd analogy, but all the symptoms were there – the sense of accomplishment, the delicious feeling at the back of the mind, the feeling of fullness and satisfaction. Basically, the content with one's self and one's life.

And then Yang's hand moved from her breast to the hem of her panties, and the mouth on her other engulfed its nipple, and it felt for all the world like Blake had just finished a humongous buffet just before it was announced there was going to be an equally large buffet comprised only of desserts.

Yang's fingertips slipped in and out of the fabric's edge in time with Blake's breaths, and just as shallowly. Every dip downwards was met with Blake bucking upwards, and every time Yang's fingers danced just out of reach like fireflies in the dark. It didn't wander, so much as pace, so much as wear a groove in the floor that was Blake's patience, skimming over the flesh of her inner thigh, roving over her hips, staying just out of reach of anything like the end of a journey. A testament to Yang's wanderlust.

And all the while, _her other hand kept scratching her behind the ears_.

"This is entirely, comprehensively, audaciously, _inexcusably_ unfair." Every adjective was slightly higher in pitch and urgency, and the "unfair" practically crashed through the musical scales like a bull in a novelty singing china shop.

Yang looked up at her with eyes like dreams you didn't tell your parents about. "Since when did either of us do anything like 'play fair'?"

Ah, that was the game. Flipping the tables it was, then.

The tables and their bodies. Or maybe they flipped more like pillows; an attempt to get someplace cooler than where things currently were. Either way, Blake paused only long enough after turning them over to strip herself of her black lace – Yang didn't even _look_ \- before plunging her tongue back into Yang's mouth like a dagger to the heart, vengeance implied. A hand molded itself around – into, it was so soft - one of Yang's lower cheeks and rolled, almost weightless, more the cause of the weight, like gravity, and she kissed, and kissed, and kissed, and refused to relent until she heard Yang moan, too. "You need to behave."

"Oh, I can be a good girl." Yang's eyes roved over Blake's body in exactly the way good girls never let their eyes wander. "But I think we can both agree I'm even better when I'm bad."

She wanted dirty talk? Blake could do dirty talk. Blake could do a _lot_ of things if Yang wanted them.

"I believe you. Naughty girl. You've thought about doing this with me a lot, haven't you?" Blake smiled around the words, rather than through them – she wanted nothing to obstruct what might only be referred to as her ultimate reckoning. Admittedly, the careless hands running up and down her body like liquid fire made that reckoning slightly more difficult than she'd reckoned, but surely a thousand idle thoughts could prepare her for a single moment of actual action.

"Like you ever _leave_ my head." Yang's whole body was flushed, and Blake could starve herself for a week and be unable to fully feast upon the sight. Like Dust, volatile and shining with potentiality, and all Blake wanted was every last mote of her. "Bending over to pick up books and fluttering your lashes and, and, you're so _gorgeous_ \- that _yukata_ of yours -"

"Shh," Blake pressed a single finger to Yang's mouth, pausing in her thoughts only a moment to marvel at the way Yang went perfectly still with only the lightest of touches. Baseball uniforms and yukata. Almost as interesting a concept as the way Yang's voice wavered, breathy, hitting new and unprecedented octaves beneath Blake's fingers. Like playing an instrument, really, and anyone with any musical talent knew that the truest test of a symphony was where it placed its silences. "There's no need to rush. We've got all night to conduct ourselves in, and if you've been thinking of me that much . . ." She leaned over Yang, drawing in close enough to delight in the dilation of her pupils. "I want equal time."

Yang said nothing, only shaped her lips into a smirk against Blake's finger before letting her tongue dart out, quick as a rattlesnake and nearly the opposite of venomous. It was a long, slow drag from the tip of her finger to the bottom of her knuckle, and lips wrapped around the digit for the trip back up in perfect time with a groan Blake was positive was solely for her own benefit. It certainly worked.

Blake attempted to murmur out a "Revenge is sweet," but she was too accurate. Just as she'd silenced Yang with that same maneuver what seemed so long ago, now, she too found all her words being swallowed up like clever fingers and promises of the future. "Absolutely wicked." Well, _almost_ all her words.

Yang groaned once more as she let Blake's finger loose, smack, and this time Blake felt the weight of it sink into her skull. There was meaning there, now. And heat. Blake liked heat. "Only for you," Yang whispered, and an entire song from a siren could not compare.

But Blake pulled back her finger sharpish at any rate, intent on seeing this through. "Yang Xiao Long," she affected her affront with purposeful transparency, "You've been getting off on me, haven't you?"

"What can I say?" Yang's hips moved beneath Blake, and oh, oh, oh, oh. "You really get my motor running."

" _Filthy_." Yang's gaze had never once wavered from Blake's own, but Blake made certain, with her thumb and index finger, Yang's chin, and a further press of one body against the other, that wouldn't be changing any time soon. Her other hand occupied itself with, oh, who could guess? "How often have you been playing with yourself and thinking about me?"

Yang whimpered as Blake's finger traced the underside of her lip, and her other hand kept itself occupied. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Blake's lips replaced her finger, her hand sprawling out over Yang's cheek, and the world erupted once more with lava, with heat, with pressure and ash, with Yang pressing desperately into her like she might offer salvation from the rain of hellfire, instead of only exacerbation. "Please." Blake removed herself only a moment, to give voice to her desires, if acted up a bit. "Please tell me."

Yang moaned against the returning kiss, and Blake almost lost herself to the song and dance. A waltz, she thought. "Cheater," she felt, more than heard, Yang say, taking the opportunity to wrap her arms around Blake's neck before roughly shoving her over with her hips and landing astride her. Who, here, was the cheater?

Not that Blake could bring herself to care, wrapping her legs around Yang hips and doing her best to encourage her to _move_. "Tell me," Blake whispered, just a breath away from Yang's lips, both in space and in time.

Yang likely intended to draw it out, but as she ground down on Blake the groan was torn from her either way. "Every night, lately." Yang muttered between the kisses she trailed from Blake's neck to her ear, a line more gripping than anything Blake had ever read in her novels, nothing to say of the way she shifted one hand up to play at her ears once again. "At least once. Sometimes more. _Dust_ , Blake . . ."

"Even if I was there?" Blake knew what the right answer to that question was, and desperately hoped in the spaces where her mind was not occupied with exploding stars that Yang didn't give her it.

" _Especially_ then." And Blake's arousal _spiked,_ launching a high-pitched mewling from the back of her throat like the last breath of air before the world fell in on itself. Yang responded with a sharp intake of breath and a sharper tooth along her human ear. "I just . . . I thought of you right there, and I couldn't . . ."

Blake grasped the back of Yang's head and let their faces meet. "If you wanted my help, all you had to do was ask," she hoped the tone of her voice would convey her utmost sincerity, or at least her increasingly heady desire to take Yang and make her scream her name. "Filthy girl."

And then everything fell into Yang's lips and her own and someone, Blake wasn't sure who, groaning like a cog in a machine ever-so-slightly out of its proper place and desperately trying to fit back in. The whole of existence was coming apart at the seams, and Yang was her only sense of stability, but drawing in as close as she wanted to only made the sensations worse, better, like, something just beyond her reach, like . . .

There was a rush of air across Blake's cheek like an alarm set at the wrong time of morning, and Blake was mercilessly torn from the greatest dream she had ever had in her entire life. _Yang isn't kissing me anymore_ , Blake realized, in the same tone of thought she might use to think, _Tuna fish have gone extinct_. "Yang?" Blake wasn't certain which inflection she was supposed to use – amused, worried, irritated, confused – so she tried for a little bit of everything, voice trembling in the same unorthodox way that Yang was at that moment. "Are you alright?"

It was less that Yang broke out into laughter and more that the laughter broke out of Yang, the way the trembling exploded in sudden evolution, and Blake was confronted with the fact that the aforementioned rush of wind was actually Yang snorting. "I just thought of something," Yang managed to converse between her convulsions.

Every old battlefield instinct that Blake formed rank and put up their shields, because the last time Yang had said something like that, she and Blake had been banned for life from Sometimes 17. "And that is?" Then again, Blake had gone along with it. She always did.

Yang smothered her laughter the way Nora smothered her pancakes: with syrupy sweetness. "So, uh, you know earlier? When I said you were stealing my best lines and called you a plagiarist?"

"After I called you a plagiarist first, if you'll allow me to point out the irony." Blake was surprised to find herself thinking clearly again. She wasn't sure she liked it. Give her the pink fuzz around the edges of her thoughts and the pink warmth around the edges of Yang's lips any day.

The last couple of Yang's snickers fell off like leaves in the autumn, slow, soft, and oddly, a little crunchy. "I just realized . . . I should have called you a copycat!"

There were a lot of things Blake could have done in that situation. Gotten angry, questioned her life choices, stopped the proceedings entirely, or some combination of the above. But really, there was only one winning move here, and Blake considered herself an expert player. "Wow, Yang. You've gotta be a lot quicker on the uptake than that. Otherwise, you'll never cat up to me."

That wasn't quite how Blake had imagined Yang collapsing into a sprawled, trembling heap atop her, but somehow these peals of laughter were just as satisfying as anything else she might have felt like dreaming up. Well, almost. "But I could never compare to you, Blake." Yang regained her composure in the same way Professor Ozpin decided to make things perfectly clear. She didn't. "I mean, come on, you're practically the _cat's meow_!"

"There is nothing in this world or any other that could stop you from making puns." Blake pressed gently on Yang's shoulder, like adjusting a house of cards, and wasn't surprised to see her tip over in a flash of color and a shocked gasp. A quick afterimage up on top of her, because actually moving to straddle would have been too slow . . . heh. More copycats. That had never occurred to her, somehow. A quick afterimage to sit on Yang's hips and Blake somehow still felt just as warm as when she had one hundred and eighty pounds of hotheaded hot girl riding astride her. "Is there?"

When Yang got angry, it was like a lot of things – usually, volatile things with smoke and insurance claims – but it was never like one hand squeezing a thigh and the other tracing meaningless patterns up the spine. Between that and the lack of bloodred whirlpool rage in her eyes, Blake was fairly certain she was safe from this puffed up display Yang was putting on. "If you're really going to make me choose between you and puns . . ." Features softened like melting chocolate, and there was the real Yang, the girl who met troubled girls in empty classrooms and taught them things close to her heart. "I'll choose you. But it'd make me really sad."

"I never said I dislike them." Blake placed a kiss, like a cannonball into a pool of hot cocoa, on Yang's marshmallow lips. "If anything, I kiss-like them."

"You kiss like a pun?" Yang flipped words like coins, and left the results to chance. It was just her way of doing things. The only thing that puzzled Blake was how she always seemed to make sure both parties won in the end. "Short, sweet, clever, snappy . . ."

"Inclined to make you giggle uncontrollably?" There were things like smoky incense in Blake's mind, and she tried to breathe them out, tried to trace the curve of Yang's cheek with a finger like a flare rod, to show her lips where they should go next. One way or another, Blake was going to start a fire tonight. "I could construct some anecdotes for you instead, if you like?"

"Yeah, baby. Gimme some of that wordplay." Yang's thumb made little circles in places Blake barely remembered existing, only occasionally, sometimes when she took a bath, and now she was positive she would never forget they existed ever again. The only thing more memorable was the slow drag of Yang's tongue across her upper row of teeth. "You and your clever little tongue."

Blake could craft a seventeen book series and top it off with an apocalyptic trilogy if Yang would just make those noises for her again. In fact, why not tell her as such? "I could write epic-length chronicles regarding your lips alone." Close enough. Possibly better.

"You aren't just paying me lip service, are you?" There was a lulling hum beneath Yang's words, an ocean of depth in her eyes, and Blake couldn't help but remember the old tales she'd heard about sirens. But there was no way they could be as beautiful as the mythical creature: the girl who cared.

There were several types of service Blake wanted to perform for Yang, "lip" being high on the list – and between that thought and Yang's punsmithery, Blake recalled what she had desperately been trying to get at before she got a tiny bit distracted. Not that she blamed herself in this instance. "No, but we are kind of getting off track here. Again." A rush of claws on – not in – the skin, down Yang's arms and up her belly, and Blake made sure to talk as slowly as possible. "We were talking about . . . let's see, what were we talking about again?" She scanned Yang's form as if the answers were written there – not just the answers to her idle musings, but the answers to life in general. "Ah, of course. We were talking about how you just couldn't help getting yourself off when you thought about me."

The confidence and surety drained from Yang's face, enough so that she had to swallow thickly to get it all down. "Well. You know. Hard to control myself, sometimes."

"Tell me again." Blake spoke as though possessed, all the clever turns of phrase and innocent questions subsumed by some force that only cared about tone and how best to wield it. Only the succubus in her head might let her know how gently to press at Yang's hips, to watch for the slight lack of focus in her eyes. And the way it was performing, it had been waiting for this moment just as long as Blake had. "When did you do so? When I was there?"

"Sometimes, yeah." Yang's fists clenched like she was holding herself back, but her arms raised above her head like she was setting herself free. Or, possibly, just showing off.

"Ever in class?" Blake rolled her hips, revenge, against Yang even as she asked the question, and one was a distraction for the other, though she wasn't sure which was which. "Mmm. Absolutely gorgeous."

Yang's body betrayed her just the barest inch of arch, and she groaned, like violins and violence, with the slow movement, shifting against Blake like an engine's throttle. There was probably a metaphor to describe how good she looked doing it, but Blake was too busy panting for breath to remember what, exactly, it was. "No, but . . . close. Once."

"Tell me." Grinding. _That_ was the cog-in-the-machine word Blake had been looking for. "Tell me how I make you feel."

"Fuck," Yang breathed, and maybe that was the right word, instead. "Blake, you feel . . . you make me feel like . . . " Her bottom lip receded into the vacuum left by her swallowed scream, her eyelids crumpled with the effort of making sure she didn't collapse entirely – Blake had felt the symptoms before, on her own face, in her own private moments with only the phantom of Yang to accompany her. "It's too much, it's not enough, it's – Blake. _More_."

If Yang was a city, a frontier town, wild and lawless and free, that single word must have been her red light district. There was more raw sexuality and burning need in the assembly of those four letters than Blake's entire library, real and imagined. But even so, the way Blake attached her lips to Yang's neck was less an answer to that need and more an expression of her own – _maybe_ the way she slowly started working her way downwards was for Yang's sake. "You liked it, didn't you?" But maybe not. Yang's body was a feast before the ffeast, an entire line of appetizers to lick and nibble on to prepare for the main course, and Blake proceeded down the line with a lifelong hunger.

"I did, yeah." Her tongue darted across her lips like Blake wanted her own to. "But let me tell you, it does not compare to the real thing."

"Why, thank you, Yang. Dirty, dirty girl." Blake let her hair symbolize her inhibitions, throwing it over her shoulder as if it didn't even matter to her at all. She leaned back, watching Yang watch her, and began believing she could get used to the idea. "You've done a lot of playing with yourself, but you know what?"

"What?" Yang spoke with the desperate edge of a girl standing on it – Blake supposed it was her job to make sure she fell.

Far be it from Blake to disappoint her. Blake kissed the outer rim of the belly button she managed to find between the armor plates of Yang's abs – like a lien caught in the cracks in the sidewalk – and straightened. Some part of her, the part of her that marinated itself in Yang and tasted like her, felt as though the whole of the night had been leading up to this precise moment – 400 degrees Fahrenheit. "I believe it's high time for your pussy to play with you."

There was a silence, not unlike a failed poetry reading. Or, maybe, like a funeral. Certainly not the texture of silence you could fall asleep to, not the only kind of silence Yang usually engaged in. This was _thick_.

"Yang?" Blake ventured, uncertain fingers drawing one leg open ever-so-slightly, and Blake absolutely did not glance downwards at that juncture.

She couldn't have, because Yang distracted her -as Yang often did - by breaking out into the warmest, loudest, most relieving laughter Blake had ever heard. Something like gumdrops, somehow. "Oh, Dust, that was perfect," Yang gasped between guffaws. "Marry me, Blake. For realsies this time."

Blake allowed herself a chuckle as well, more relief than anything humurous, like laughing at the thousand-pound weight that had fallen behind you. "Ah, well. If we're doing this 'for realsies' I guess the pressure's on, then." As slowly as a flag – a Jolly Roger, to keep in with the theming – being lowered down its mast, Blake sank between Yang's legs, keeping a skull-like gaze on Yang's own face the entire time . . . or at least until she had a chance to look upon her cargo. Something was going to be coming, but it wasn't going to be death. Unless you went with the old, old, _old_ slang. "Wow, Yang. You're almost as wet as I am."

This sentence was met with a strangled gasp and a twitch of Yang's entire body, as if something momentously sexy had been said instead of that nonsense. "I repeat: _so_ much."

"Love you too." Blake's tongue, attached to her head, as tongues tended to be, sank lower and lower like the fall of man – or, perhaps, the fall of Yang – something decadent and over the top, reaching to new heights as it strove for new lows. Closer and closer it came, Yang panting, just short of pleas, up above. Blake reached the forbidden fruit, briefly paused as if contemplating the idea of Yang crying out for her as God, and . . .

"Oh!" That one word stopped the proceedings as sharply as a fresh-forged knife in the middle of traffic. Logically, the word had to have followed the realization – but it was so quick a response that, looking back, it seemed as though the word itself was what stopped the procedure. A brick wall, once built, stops more effectively and for far longer than mere construction projects.

Yang, the unfortunate traffic in question, shot Blake a glance that might be called 'checking under the hood.' "Something up?"

Besides Blake's heartrate, yes. "I just remembered. I never actually gave you proper credit for earlier this evening."

"What are you . . . talking about?" Yang's voice was dusted with diamonds, but differently than it had been before. Somewhat gentle, and fragile, but with an edge to it. And beautiful.

"The part of our game where you slammed me against the wall, of course. I've fought monsters the size of trains and performed heists and feats most people would call impossible, but I have to say that was probably the most thrilling moment of my life, thus far." Blake beamed like a floral arrangement. Overdone, too much effort, and likely to disappear almost as soon as it was received, but goodness, wasn't it pretty? "The knee was a nice touch. Pardon the pun."

Yang did not pardon or make peace with punsayers. She fought back. This was, of course, how things had escalated to this point. "Yeah . . . I . . . really knee-ded you then, huh?" It also seemed to be how the night was going to continue.

In response, Blake chuckled, like buzzing bees – like the roar of Bumblebee - to pollinate further flowers – to travel more open roads. "I suppose I'm being a bit misleading. The part with the wall and the pinned arms was nice . . . _very_ nice . . . but it was actually when you told me you were going to just leave me alone that I realized what a _masterstroke_ that move was." Ah, and stroking. Blake couldn't ease up on the throttle now. One thumb met the skin just above what was just above Yang's roundabout, and drove down the road at a pace leisurely enough to be called 'sedate'.

"Masterstroke, masturbation . . . I'm, I'm qualified for both." Yang's eyes followed the path of Blake's thumb with only occasional trailblazing. Mostly in a brief downwards direction, before returning to the warm safety of the open trail. "But, uh, thanks."

"I mean . . . gosh." Blake was as purposefully breathless as if she were attempting an infiltration mission. In some ways, stealth was still the name of the game, which meant putting her other hand on Yang's thigh and squeezing was something of a risk. Ah, but the _prize_. "Where on Remnant did you come up with that idea, Yang?"

Yang jerked beneath Blake's touch like a puppet beneath unpracticed hands. "It, uh, just . . . came to me. And, uh, while we're talking about 'coming' -"

"I know you said I seemed unflappable earlier." Momentum was the key in any battle. Defend for as long as necessary, but once attacking, never stop. "But trust me: in that moment, I wanted nothing more than for you to _keep going_. And you knew that, even if later on you convinced yourself you were wrong. Deep down, I would have given anything for you to just . . . take me. Right then and there." Blake sighed, a whisper of wind, the echo of which was enough to let anyone know the cavern they were in extended far deeper than they thought. "Anything except my pride. I was just . . . too stubborn to relent. You are absolutely devious, Yang Xiao Long."

"Not that I don't appreciate it, Blakey, but . . ." Yang had to stop. Probably to keep her hips from bucking any worse than they already were. Keeping her leg still was becoming a very difficult job. "Is right now really the best time to – _oh my gosh_."

Ah, Blake had been caught out. The mask over the evil grin and glimmering eye were useless, now, then. "Something up?"

"More like you're up to something." Yang spoke the words all clumped together, like she was gathering them into a ball. Probably planning on throwing it at Blake's too-suspecting head. "You're taking revenge on me!"

"All's fair, right?" Blake licked her upper lip. Slowly. She would make Yang think of the bottom of her tongue as one of the sexiest parts of her body, and she would make Yang like it. "Mwa ha ha."

"You're gonna make me beg for it, aren't you?" Yang's voice – and her cheeks – was tinged with realization. And maybe just a bit of want. Which wasn't nearly enough longing for Blake's purposes.

"Yang. Be honest with me. Be honest with yourself." Blake brought herself low enough for Yang to feel her breath on her belly – low enough for her breasts to brush against the inside of her steel-beam thighs – low enough to match the reverberations of her voice. "Deep down in your heart . . . or somewhere, at least . . . don't you sort of _want_ to beg me for it?"

Yang's hand spread over her face like an elegant fan revealing itself to the world. Though, all her hand revealed was everything it was trying to hide – the money Blake would pay to see that blush was nothing short of bankruptcy. "Maybe."

"So let's hear it." Blake's voice was soft as cotton, intoxicating as gin, and sharp as the combination between the two. She wasn't sure how she'd brought the voice that narrated all her thoughts when Yang was around to the surface, but she wasn't complaining, either. It was about time that Yang knew what it felt like to be under the effects of narrative conventions. "Convince me I should continue."

There was a brief moment – not brief, really, but briefer than she expected – where Blake thought if she cocked her head just right, and tilted her ears at the appropriate angle counter to it, she might catch one of Yang's stray thoughts. The air seemed to be holding its breath, the room had gone so still, save for the whirring clockwork which was more likely Yang's heart beating than her brain working. But all the same, at that turning of time's hands, time passed.

And then, the moment ended with a movement, Yang sitting up as if she was breaking the possibility of failure open on her back. Her head peeked from just above her breasts, like heads normally worked from lower angles, but more so, and the flush of her skin lent vivid color to the tableau arranged somewhere beyond Blake's understanding. It was, if anything, like standing beneath a volcano in the firm and certain belief that one was invulnerable to lava. A view to die for.

And then, on top of everything else, Yang spoke, and it blew the roof off the place – if the place was, in fact, the planet, and the roof was, in fact, the all-encompassing sky. "Blake." It was such a gentle note, such a gentle smile, such a gentle gaze, but with heat below it all, that the girl with kitty ears wondered if perhaps lava tolerated cats, after all. "I love you. More than anything."

" . . . well, damn. You win." The really infuriating part, of course, was that Yang had used that line before. Multiple times. And it just kept working.

"I knew you were just a big softy, deep down." Yang lay back slowly, unfolding in the way of the paper fan, or of a good book, to stretch a comparison to the point of sheer invisibility.

"Look who's talking." Blake poked Yang somewhere to emphasize her point. She wasn't sure exactly where – the vicinity of the hips, certainly – but it worked. And it absolutely wasn't in any way a distraction from other any other issues at hand.

Intimidation seemed so strange, looking at it objectively – in a lot of ways, this was just another mouth to feed on, and Blake was, in a word, hungry. In two words, very hungry. But this was too much food on her plate by about a breakfast's worth; this was asking her to explore the entirety of space. Blake had heard it described as "thirsty" but she'd never thought she'd be drinking an ocean.

She'd described Yang as an ocean before, but perhaps Blake would have been better off saving the comparison for this situation. For one thing, a certain crass quality was, perhaps, appreciated by the scenario she'd, in a manner of speaking, written herself into, and for another thing, Blake had no idea whatsoever if she actually possessed the ability to swim.

Some things were very different from book-learning. Some things you just had to do.

_Insert innuendo here_ , her thoughts nudged her where she needed to go.

Blake took in a breath, partly for centering herself, partly for the sake of hesitation, and partly because she didn't expect she'd be breathing clearly for quite some time after this. Then, at last, she dove in.

Or, at least, ran to the edge of the diving board, stopped just short, turned around, climbed back down the ladder, and eased herself into the pool while chanting something to herself about all the world being a stage and her only being an understudy.

_Careful, don't use the rough part, take it easy at first, don't hurt her, can't be too much_

The first lick was slow, languid, and more than a little hesitant, all descriptions that got lost somewhere in the constantly-shifting labrynith that her mind usually only pretended to be. She expected a lot of responses from Yang – the very number and spread of which was enough to give her vertigo even with her hands on Yang's abdominal muscles, which were the sturdiest things since, well, the rest of Yang was born. She'd hoped for an ecstatic rush of breath and a, possibly, maybe, literal outpouring of affections to accompany an explosion of her name into the air. She'd braced herself for an awkward silence or perhaps a slight cough, or worse yet, "you can get started whenever you want". She'd had gasps of breath and lurid moans booming background noise in her mind the entire evening, and dearly wished to see them brought to the forefront. She'd finally figured, most reasonably, that Yang might hum appreciatively and give her some guidance, or maybe tips for improvement.

What actually happened was that, a moment after the lick had finished, Yang said "oh."

Like she'd signed up for an eating contest and been given an entire roast turkey. Like she'd studied vigorously for a math test and been handed an essay examination. Like she'd dove in just after Blake and forgotten she couldn't swim – yes, that was it, she couldn't swim, and only Blake was around to save her.

Yang said "oh." Like she was in over her head, only now just realizing.

Blake smiled, a gorge with fangs, deep, sinister, and frighteningly toothy. And then, quite unlike any sort of gorge at all, extended her tongue again, for a lick even slower than hesitation: a lick of fire. Suns and magma and lightning may try and fail, but perhaps there was still something that could make. Yang. _Burn_.

"Oh, wow." Yang's voice was somewhere else, somewhere high up and looking over an entire world it hadn't realized was there. "Oh, _wow_." But her body was there. More there than ever, Blake would say, clutching her legs and twitching her fingers as she was barely beginning to do.

Tonight was looking up. Blake did, too. It was really the only position for something as devilish as she was suddenly feeling to be looking from – that position being, of course. Well. "Oh, I think I'm going to enjoy this."

"I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you" Yang's voice was falling into pieces.

But Blake wanted more than just pieces. She wanted obliteration. "You're talking too much." Not enough, not enough, never enough. "Start moaning, or I'll make you moan."

One side of Yang's mouth picked itself up for a better view of what was going on, and as if to counterbalance one of her eyes snapped open in a glimmer of smile. "Blah blah blah."

Well, didn't that just send a sunny snake slithering south Blake's spine. Words suddenly seemed superfluous, and what they could be replaced with just seemed super. "Warnings were given," Blake managed to make herself murmur just before she would otherwise be talking with her mouth full.

Lick. Lick. Liiiiiiiiiick.

. . . that was how it was supposed to be done, right?

Like tasting a lollipop, except warmer and sweeter. But not literally sweeter. After all the talk about ambrosia and anticipation, all that came to Blake's mind when she began licking Yang was "Earl Gray Tea," maybe a tad underbrewed. A definite peachy flavor though. Something warm and pleasant to keep you cozy at night, but awake, too. Refined, but not overly so.

And of course, the strangest part, besides the fact that Blake found herself critiquing it, was that it tasted better than the anticipation and ambrosia. Yang was full of surprises, at least in all the places she wasn't full of herself.

"Mmm, more." Well, that was in there too, of course. "Please, good, _yes_ . . ." Yang was a go-getter, determined, and not used to taking 'no' for an answer. Blake hadn't been entirely sure that 'please' was even in her vocabulary. Finding out like this was somehow satisfying, intriguing, and mystifying, all at the same time. Like coming home and smelling fresh-baked cookies waiting for you when you lived all by yourself.

"I'm beginning to think this could become my new favorite hobby." Blake was performing the most classic interrogation technique, and finding it surprisingly apt for what she was doing at the moment. Good cop, bad cop, in a matter of speaking. The speaking was what mattered. Encouraging words, of course, but words spoke so softly they couldn't possibly stack up to action, and such action Blake gave to Yang – but only after she _didn't_ give any action to Yang. "Poetry's overrated, but, ah, _music_ . . ."

Assault, Yang was peppered with kisses and licks, not at but around, and so satisfying, intriguing, mystifying was the response to the escalating heat that it made baking cookies for strangers look like a piece of cake. "Mm . . . ah . . . _ohhh_!" Music was, if anything, an understatement. Was there a word to describe sound that pulled the heartstrings? That made song pop, fully formed, into one's head? Whatever that word was, Yang was a virtuoso at the art.

"That's what I like to hear." The moment seemed as real to Blake as a passage in her favorite novel. Real within her head, certainly, but with the constant knowledge that in truth only imagination and retreat from the world at large allowed for the sensation. And yet here Yang was, less a paragraph and more the book containing them, just as real, just as solid, just as warm and comforting . . . and just as ready to open up at the movement of two fingers, though with much more precise placement than any book ever required. "And _this_ is what I like to see." And taste, and taste, and _taste_ . . .

For a few moments, the world was silent, save for Yang's breath, steady on its rhythm, like a metronome, and Blake kept to the beat with each pass of her tongue. The beat, but not the shape. Like dancing, like freedom and exploration, like scientific endeavor, Blake shifted her passages, keeping careful notes of how she – she, herself, Blake Belladonna of _all people_ – affected Yang, humming in appreciation (which Yang appreciated too) whenever things seemed particularly pleasant. But always matching the tempo.

Everything was in balance, held in place like someone had tipped over the sands of time and forgotten to right them again at just the right moment, and for the span of a few hundred heartbeats Blake believed the moment could last forever.

But time and rhythms mean countdowns and cessation, and finally, inevitably, Yang burst. "Holy _Dust_ , Blake, I am going to build a monument to your tongue!"

Blake kissed the approximate center of mass – she nearly said something else, very similar, to herself, but stopped just before making the worst pun she'd have ever made – and looked up to a girl glowing so red hot she must have been unlocking the second level of her Semblance. "Awww." It would be a much more effective pout, Blake was certain, if she wasn't running her claws in gentle circles over Yang's inner thighs. But some sacrifices simply had to be made. "You aren't going to make it to my brain, instead? I thought that was your favorite part of me."

"Your tongue's what lets me hear all the sexy stuff that's on your mind, though." One of Yang's hands entered Blake's field of vision just long enough to brush a stray hair from her face, and somehow or other, that seemed to say everything. An island of care and concern in a sea of chaos. "Also: _fuck_."

"I suppose that's fair." This time Blake would take it from the top – take Yang from the top – the top portion, that was. Clarification was important: Blake, after all, was uncertain whether Yang had just given commentary or a command, and whether she was rejoinding or acquiescing. "Just make sure you get its good side, alright?"

"I'm not sure it has a bad siii _iii_ -oo _oh_ h- _ **aaaaaa**_ _hhh_!" Yang's voice trembled like an earthquake, low and potentially destructive, and the walls fell in – or maybe that was just her thighs clamping on Blake's ears.

. . . wow, that was a good spot. Blake would chance to even call that a _great_ spot. _The_ great spot. Maybe even . . . oh, so that's why they called it what they called it. "Have I ever mentioned that I adore you?" The message was muffled by, erm, everything, but Blake was certain it got through nevertheless. Yang had excellent hearing, just like every other part of her.

"Feeling's mutual." Yang's legs relaxed, thighs moving away from Blake's ears slowly, as if afraid of hurting her, and ankles wrapping around her back like an apologetic hug. Never before had a pair of legs been shown to care about Blake's well-being, but it would go to show that Yang's would be the first "Super-duper mutual."

Blake didn't have a witty response to that, but then again, even if she did, she'd have ended up doing what she did anyway: spreading fingers like a clamp, thrusting her tongue like a knife, and seeing what generous tortures she could yet lavish upon Yang's unsuspecting – no, too suspecting – honor. Each pass, like reaching out for light made solid, was illuminating and warm, and that one particular spot seemed to glow brighter each time Blake conversed with it.

That was it. This was just another conversation. Her and Yang, just like always.

Granted, the subject matter was much more interesting than usual, but a conversation, nevertheless.

And Blake kept up the chatter, Yang keeping up the breathy retorts, very much emphasized by the body language of bucking hips, the occasional squeak or giggle doing nothing to change the topic for very long. Yes, just another conversation at the tip of Blake's tongue, another thrust and riposte, just a tad more literal now, something with a taste to it, and certainly something worth repeating.

But there was only so much wordplay could do; the limits of Blake's tongue were yet to be found as she spoke, as she marked, and Yang cried in what could only be called ecstasy, not so different from the glory of her laughter, and with each and every lick Blake felt the wetness overflowing, the heat at her cheeks whether Yang's or her own she didn't know, the taut muscle moving beneath Yang's skin, the little bump that she kept hitting with her nose whenever she put her neck into her licks -

Little bump?

Little . . . oh.

Oh. Oh!

Oh.

Well.

Dear diary: Jackpot.

"Now what have we here?" Blake knew exactly what they had there, of course, but she needed to say something – anything – in order to stop herself from vocalizing some inane thought about finding pearls inside of oyster shells.

"I dunno, but I bet it's happy to see you." Yang's attitude tried for cavalier and came off more as shield-bearer, uncertain but certainly trying.

Blake let herself giggle, because she felt Yang deserved a reward. "Tell me what you want."

"You. Fingers. Tongue." Yang's voice was actually strained, and Blake had never compared herself to a three-thousand pound weight before. "I'd draw you a picture, but I'm kind of sort of terrible at art. Plus I think maybe you're more creative than I am."

"If you're encouraging me to get imaginative, you must really be desperate." Blake kissed her just at the top of her stomach, and Yang hissed something that the world contracted into. "I suppose we'll just have to find out what depraved depths I can dive to together, then." Blake finally drew her tongue, lazy and indulgent like a Sunday morning, over the driving force behind most of Yang's actions tonight.

The sheer warmth, like Sunday morning's sunrise, threw her for a loop. The squeak of a noise Yang made in response was the rest of the roller coaster.

There was a joke in there about riding Yang like one, but Blake was a bit busy making her masterwork to listen to herself make it. That was what it was like, really. Making a masterpiece. Something exhausting and proud, and worthy of attention and respect. Something beautifully singular.

Tracing claws down Yang's abdomen was like forging the ultimate weapon, hearing the hiss of steel from between clenched teeth. Humming against everything that was most sensitive about her was like writing a bestselling, critically acclaimed novel, something to put the _Ninja_ series to shame. Alternating her tongue against fold and nub, rough and smooth, hard and soft, was like painting something so bright and so vivid people could hear it, hear Yang crying out into the night as though looking for someone she'd lost, or finding something she thought she'd never have. Removing her tongue and replacing it with a finger, pumping like a piston, watching enraptured as Yang pressed her hand against her own mouth with all her might, other hand against her breast and kneading, kissing up her abdominal muscles with every intent of removing that hand, losing herself in the muffled groans from Yang's lips as she kneaded her other breast, feeling Yang's hand cover her own and encourage as she bit down on her own lip . . .

Was like pleasuring Yang Xiao Long. The truest expression of creativity and wonder, Blake was beginning to believe.

Cheeks reddening with heat and squealing whine escaping from between her clinched lips, Yang reminded Blake in that moment of nothing more than a teakettle. One about to boil over. Or, possibly, explode. "Mm, if you do that, I'm g-gonna . . . oh, man, oh man, oh man . . ."

Blake nuzzled her chin, a movement she wanted to compare to the way a songbird's singing tickled the ears. "Please don't hold back."

Yang looked down at her with an expression that looked, of all things, like a melting ice cream sundae. Still quite sweet, and over-the-top in all the traditional ways, but pooling nonetheless. "Huh?"

"I know we're obsessed with challenges and part of how we flirt is teasing each other . . . but you don't actually have to impress me." Blake slid down Yang's body, never breaking her gaze, like she was standing on a sea liner leaving port and had left a hand at her heart as a memento. "You already have. You and your supernova soul."

"I . . ." Muscles like those could tell anyone that Yang wasn't the type of person who was used to their body not doing everything they wanted – and yet she seemed so constantly surprised by how her hips moved to meet Blake's palm, her fingers, her tongue. "You sure?"

"Don't worry." A kiss laid itself on Yang's waist bud, quick, disappearing upon contact, like one of Blake's afterimages. "I've got you."

At last, all at once, Yang's entire body trembled, as if plucked, as if played like a harp. " _Yes_ ," Yang cried once more, a noise like a mewling tiger, before descending into a jungle-tinged cacophony that told every one of Blake's instincts to _conquer_.

And so she did. Her tongue worked furiously to recite every good memory she and Yang had ever made together, and her palms settled across Yang's stomach and pressed, as if anything could possibly hold her down when she really wanted to move. Yang was the immovable object in motion, yes – and Blake insisted that she would be the unstoppable force brought still, collapsing in on herself. The trembling grew in partnership with Yang's voice, a portent, a prophecy, a message that the sky was falling in, and in the middle of it all, Blake felt nothing but fulfillment. Wasn't an end to it all, all she ever wanted?Something final?

Calmly, heated, a solitary finger pressed against Yang's clitoris, and Blake flicked the switch she knew would trigger the apocalypse.

The world ended. Not with a bang. Not with a whimper.

The world ended in _silence_.

But fire, nevertheless. Yang exploded, nigh-on literally, her Semblance lighting her like the suspension bridge to heaven had been set aflame. Somewhere far, far in the future, Blake's memoirs made a note that she was probably the only person alive to ever know what an apocalypse tasted like. Warm apple cider, but with peaches instead, she'd say. In the then and there, however, tastes and sensations were roughly shoved into Blake's brainstem by the retreat – like a backwards bullet – of her tongue, which with remarkable initiative had deduced that sometimes there was, in fact, such a thing as too much afterglow.

Her hands stayed, though. Blake made them – it wasn't as if it hurt – the fire wasn't literal, though it was about as close as something descriptive could be without touching. An asymptote analogy. Even if it had hurt, it would have been worth it - it wasn't every day one got the opportunity to hold the sunrise, after all. "That's it." She struggled to keep her voice as soft as the gentle caresses she – quite literally – used to ground Yang again. "Come for me."

Yang – steadfast, certain, each footstep a declaration of independence – shook at Blake's touch, or at her words, or maybe just at her being there, any of which sounded absolutely lovely. Once, twice, a sudden twitch, a noise like a firecracker from a very long distance away. The glow around her body receded in a series of small steps, like a child who kept turning around to wave goodbye every few feet. "Oh, yes . . ." she mured, at last. It was like murmuring, but even softer.

And then it was over.

Blake allowed Yang to rest on Blake's laurels for several moments before, in terms of the texture of different kisses, nudging her awake. "Quite a ride, from the look of things." And the sound, and the feel, and the taste, and the scent, the sixth sense was probably involved in there somewhere . . .

"Well, you know." It was oddly specific, Yang's voice. If a thousand angels could sit on the head of a pin, the entirety of paradise must have plopped itself down on the tip of her tongue. She was attempting, from the sound of things, to swallow it all. "Lots of foreplay. Literally months' worth."

"Well, when you put it like that, I've just got to know. At the risk of sounding so insufferably pleased with myself that you clamp your thighs around my ears like a vise on fire . . ." It was awfully easy to take risks when all outcomes lay in your favor, Blake supposed. "Did I perform up to standards?"

The last of Yang's panting faded away – or, judging by the look in Yang's eyes, were shoved into a filing cabinet somewhere with intent on later use. "You know, I just realized something. I've never actually used the word 'exquisite' before."

Blake's smile grew an inch – or, proportionately speaking, stretched over the horizon like the stream of color behind a supersonic hummingbird. "Another 'e' word."

"Exactly." Yang's smile and her gaze were both a bit lopsided and more than a little messy. It matched her hair, and her voice, and certainly her general sense of personality, but more than that, it matched Blake's heartbeat.

And probably her laughter, too. Blake giggled, small and soft, like a tiny flurry in the middle of a summer day. "Do you mind if I kiss you now, or should I go brush my teeth first?"

"What kind of question is that?" Yang was the only person amongst all of Team RWBY to complain when homework was too easy. But even she never grinned like that when faced with bullet trajectories and Grimm stalking patterns. "'Course I wanna know how I taste on your tongue. That's like, the hottest thing."

"Do you mean the most erotic?" In terms of preparation, that sentence was an underground base beneath a fortress, lined with turrets, with Yang in the middle as both the protected object and the final line of defense. Then again, Yang was what Blake was preparing herself for, but logic was a tad iffier with Yang around.

"Right, right, gotta keep in with the 'e' word thing." Yang leaned up close and fast, a testament to her muscles, so quickly that the end of her sentence made Blake's lips tingle with the feeling of it.

As much as Blake enjoyed the feeling of what happened next, closing the distance with just enough force to make Yang lie back down and enjoy herself, the kiss wasn't really for her sake. Yang was the empress, mighty, glorious and imperiously golden in her naked beauty, and this meeting of mouths was designed to give her everything that was already rightfully hers. An attendant, feeding her grapes. That was it.

Of course, the metaphor fell apart around the realization that Yang was attempting to give just as much back despite their positions – but Blake couldn't think of a better one between Yang's nibbling at her lips and her tongue coaxing her own into action, so an empress and her grapes would have to serve as the record.

Eventually, because even decadence and grapes must give way to basic needs such as air, they tore themselves apart from each other. "So?" Blake pitched the question underhand, decided at the last second not to throw it at all, and walked it over to Yang instead with a gentle brush of golden bangs out of both of their eyes. "How is it?"

Eroticism, now properly credited, finally got Yang to make her repeat performance. That noise Yang's lips made when they smacked together was probably not meant to be heard in polite company. "Speaking of 'e' words." It was probably the first time Blake had ever seen anyone look inquisitively at their own mouths before – odd that it would be Yang Xiao Long to question her mouth's contents. "You ever tried Earl Gray tea before?"

With no other response readily available, Blake found that her default response to anything Yang said was laughter, the kind that left skid marks in its wake, the kind that blurred, the kind that left an afterimage of itself behind in the form of a rush of air hitting the back of the nostrils from below. "Ugh. I hate it when I snort."

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" If fears and insecurities might be represented as a field of tarred spikes, gravelled ground, and scorched earth, Yang's good cheer could only be called a steamroller. Moving at Mach Eight. Must have been working on the charcoal from earlier. "I was too distracted by how cute your laugh is. Especially that snort at the end."

There were many sentences to describe the things a soul could do – be enriched, grow, glow, even dim – but Blake was certain that up until this point, no one had ever considered one might shimmy appreciatively before. "You're too kind to me." She shared a kiss with Yang, because something else souls could do was be bared.

"Not even remotely possible." Yang didn't even wait for the kiss to be over before responding, and the curious sensation of the words entering Blake's mouth was more like breathing in the smoke over a campfire than anything else.

And then came the rain.

There were, of course, different kinds of rain. There was the gentle summer rain, alluded to often but rarely seen, the reminder that no matter how the heat may scorch the blacktop, there would always be a change in season. There was the driving, pounding rain, the relentless barrage of water less a rainstorm and more a tsunami sent through a shredder and very angry at what had been done to it. There was the miraculous rain of the desert, the life-giving rain at the end of the drought, the well-filling, spring-filling, heart-filling answer to every spoken and unspoken prayer. There was the soft rain, the comfort, the gentle, cold, welcoming, comisserating caresses of bared skin in the aftermath of tragedy. There was a rain for every season, every day, every mood, and every adventure in writing, imagination, and life itself.

Yang's hands were all of these rains, at one point or another.

But at that immediate moment, as they rolled over one another like storm clouds to reverse their positions one last time, Yang was the light sprinkle down Blake's spine, the pitter-patter of tiny sensations, given life only a short time ago. Her fingers were the splash of the nearby car, everywhere at once and then suddenly gone, leaving only a memory of exhilaration and surprise behind. Every movement her wrists made was a sort of -

"Yang. If you don't do something soon, here? You're going to drive your cat up a tree." Blake panted, trying to gather up enough air to say what she needed to say, before everything didn't work like that at all anyway. "And I hope my fellow Faunus can forgive my perpetuating a stereotype, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to get back down."

"Just jump." Yang's smile was a sunbeam so solid, Blake might not have even needed any acrobatics. "I'll catch you."

"If there's anyone I know would, it'd be you." Yang caught her eye, her heart, her whispered words of self-pity. Why shouldn't she catch the rest of her, too?

"Anyone you know _. . . wood?_ " Yang's smile was as slippery as an entire bathtub of suds playing tag, and the way her hands were moving she seemed to be trying to catch every one of them.

"I stand enlightened." Lay enlightened, technically, but there was very little time for fine print when the business deal looked so very attractive. "But still, I'd at least like to know where to aim my descent."

"You mean your . . . _fall_?" One time, Yang went out into the Emerald Forest by herself, killed 27 Grimm, came back unscathed, and received a commendation for her initiative. She looked even more pleased with herself than she did back then.

"Yang." Blake wasn't actually annoyed, but there was a road sign saying ANNOYANCE – NEXT EXIT just a few feet in front of her and she was entirely willing to make a sharp right turn.

"Alright, alright, keep your clothes on." Yang's eyes often danced with delight. This time, Blake had the distinct feeling they were preparing for a tango, and requesting Blake's own pupils join in. "Or, you know, don't."

It was obvious enough of a quip that Blake felt she could give herself a little leeway in the witty retort department. "My clothes are already off, Yang."

"That's the spirit!" Yang grinned, like the girl on Midwinter morning who snuck downstairs to peek at all her gifts around 3 AM or so.

"Happy to be of assistance." Finally – mercifully – the rainstorm came to a slow, drizzling end, leaving only a (thoroughly drenched) Blake standing beneath the clouds, hoping to catch a glimpse of the setting sun. Something setting, at least, as Yang dipped low, low, low down in a way to make planetary movement jealous.

"Hmmm." Yang hummed appreciatively. Like she was drinking a glass of fine wine. Vintage vagina, Blake specifically did not say out loud. "Shaved, huh? Sort of figured, actually. You seem like the kind of gal to keep everything organized."

Blake might have shrugged, if her entire body wasn't coiled with the kind of expectation found in people in line for concert tickets for coming on three days now. "It isn't a big deal or anything. I can grow it back out, if that's what you prefer."

"I prefer what you prefer." Yang topped this sentence off with a kiss, like a cherry on a sundae, and somewhere deep, deep down Blake hoped she wouldn't end up tasting like some kind of ice cream. "You're perfect just the way you are."

Yang could see Blake naked – obviously. That was the, naked, truth. And just as obviously, she still called her "perfect." The little bit of belly fat she couldn't seem to get rid of no matter how much huntressing she did, the slight crook of her left ear compared to her right, the scar beneath her right armpit, and of course her complete lack of anything resembling a hipbone. All that, and Yang said she was perfect.

It was so simple, so superficial, so shallow – but it made Blake feel as though she was actually worth something. And didn't that just sum it up?

Well, no. Yang was too deep for that.

She was also dangerously close to leaving Blake incapable of pushing two syllables together, let alone constructing an entire castle of metaphorical acumen, which was why Blake was getting words out while the getting was good. "Don't tell me I'm so perfect you're afraid of ruining me?"

Yang slid along the length of Blake's body, coming up to look her in the eye, and if there were a better view in the world, Blake would probably still personally prefer this one. "It's more like I'm not sure how to give you what you deserve."

" _Quickly_." Blake pointed the words, more like the familiar fish hook than any sort of spear. Not much room for any slack in the line, she'd admit, but it helped that the fish seemed entirely willing to bite.

"Hey, come on. We've got all night, right?" Yang nuzzled Blake. Not with her body, but with her words. "Don't you worry, Blake. I'm gonna take real good care of you."

Between words like umbrellas and fingers like applying sunscreen, Blake could only arch beneath – beneath Yang – beneath understanding that she was making love to the sun, no matter who Yang claimed was the life-giving light in their relationship. "I know." Blake was falling beneath Yang, falling from the sky, racing towards a tornado, dancing between bolts of lightning, challenging a tsunami, and yet she did not, could not feel as though she was in any danger. "You make me feel safe." She smirked, and did not care what dangers lay in taunting Mother Nature, for dangers lay with her too; for Yang lay with her, as well. But then, she was taunting Yang, too – and there was appeal in losing out to danger, too. Lots and lots of "too." "No matter what kind of stunt you're pulling."

"That means a lot to me." Little kids, Blake noticed, always drew the sun in pictures as though it was smiling – and wearing sunglasses. Looking at Yang now, Blake was beginning to understand the unconscious impulse. "I mean it. But, uh, right now? Right now I'm most concerned with making you feel like you're getting off."

"Oh, you're doing that, too." Blake offered the words like popsicles, sweet and melty, and tried not to imagine what Yang would look like sucking on one. But she didn't try _too_ hard. "Trust me."

"Huh. Hmm. Nope, not seeing it." With every bit lower Yang's voice dipped into that sentence, her hand matched, and Blake began to wonder if she'd ever known what anticipation had tasted like before this moment. "So, as a capable, responsible, and all around _thorough_ huntress, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to investigate that claim for myself."

"I'll make certain to do everything necessary for the investigations to go smoothly." Blake could listen to Yang laugh for hours. Not in a row. She'd keep interrupting it with kissing, after all.

"So. You ready for me to, uh, bask in your presence? Marvel at your . . . greatness? Drink deeply from the wells of your wisdom? Dabble in my hobbies?" Every time Yang seemed to reach the limits of how high her eyebrows could emphasizingly creep, she surpassed them. Maybe it was a side effect of her stretching grin. "See what kind of poetry I can write about you?"

"Yang." Blake could compare it to an intervention - Yang would go for hours if not stopped. If ever there was a sentence applicable to any situation . . . "I know you've been looking forwards to tasting me. Trust me, I've been looking forwards to it too. But . . ." Her words sprawled outwards, shattering the tableau and falling as though pushed from a window, and they left a crater when they hit the ground. "I am so unbelievably _fucking_ horny that if you don't put two fingers into me and _pump_ , then I am going to _die_."

"That is the best sentence I have ever heard you say." Yang said while _not putting her fingers in_. "Except for maybe 'What kind of person would I be if I did not give you the same in return?', of course. That one sort of redefined my life."

" _Please_." Blake keened, the noise of creaking chains in stone walls, a noise she'd kept locked up the entire evening.

"Alrighty, make that third best." Those TV shows in which someone said to 'act casual' and everyone got into a pose that was anything but. That was the way Yang's voice sounded at this moment – the way two fingers looked, poised to strike. "No holding back, right?"

And then there was a feeling that Blake really couldn't describe as anything other than _solved_ , and absolutely, there was no more holding back. Not of her voice, certainly, which ripped its way out of her throat like something from the unexplored Grimm country, black, spiky, and wild. "Yang . . ." She never knew she could feel so full and so hungry at the same time, but Yang had always been paradoxes, like right now, how Blake wanted this to keep going but she wanted it to end, " _Yang_!"

It was sensory overload; or rather, not there, but near.

"Oh, yes, there," Blake whispered against the idea of the thumb, like a whirlpool, dragging her down into its depths with circular motions. Somewhere on the horizon, claws bore down Yang's back, and at the furthest edge of the world legs twined with legs like honeysuckles vines, sweet and clinging.

The barest trace of a feather might set Blake off now, the gentlest wisp of wind, the softest of touches or even softer glances just might prove themselves too much to bear. And what Blake got instead was Yang biting down, hard, on her pulse. Canines had always given Blake trouble.

Blake cried out, pressing hands to head and breast as if she had any right to simultaneously hold close and push away. There was a noise to the cry, of course, but she wasn't sure what it was over the fizzing sound in all four ears.

"Yes, yes, please, _Yang_ , more . . ." Because there _was_ fizzing – because it was, to come at it from a different route, as though Blake were a soda can, some type of dark flavor, certainly, that had been shaken vigorously for about six hours, and could now only wish for the feel of a finger touching her tab. All she was getting was a tongue licking up the moisture on the outside of the can. _Slowly_.

"Oh, _fuck_ yes." Blake was finally opened, a leg between the thighs – but it was her leg, and Yang's thighs, and somehow it seemed so much harder to tell where each of them began and ended. Oh, yes, she was soda, because her blood, beneath hands that defined the word 'relentless', was bubbling, and sweet, and expanding to fill her, a blastwave of pressure being held back by the thinnest bit of aluminum.

"More." She had reached the point, fingers at her backside and squeezing and faster curls of knuckles within her.

"Yes, that feels so good . . ." It was too much. Far too much. She couldn't control herself, kissing down Yang's neck, feeling heavy breath upon her palm, at Yang's breasts, letting tiny groans feed her own like sparks fed fire as she moved her thigh against something hot, wet, and suspiciously Yang-sounding, over and over again.

" _Ohhh_." Sensory overload. That's what it was.

If only it could last forever.

But she couldn't keep a hold of anything; not even as a distraction, not even her own memories. Her world was a multifaceted maelstrom of darkened details illuminated in flashes by the lightning that struck whenever Yang lay her hands upon her. It was the details that Blake had to focus on, else she be swept up in the storm and carried off somewhere so far away from herself it might as well be Menagerie. The mouth pressed against her breast was every present of a smirk Yang had ever given her, and the pumping of her fingers brought back memories of battle, of grace, of speed and momentum and smiles wider than the trail of destruction Yang left behind her. The brush of hair against her thighs was a sleeping form, an example to follow on the nights the moon kept singing Blake awake. The curl of her fingers was puns and quips and heartfelt confessions, the drag of her leg the mischief she managed to make, the pumping was faster and faster and _faster_ , it all blended together like a tempest in a snowglobe, all white swirls obscuring somewhere familiar, like home, the one she'd never had, it was all the same thing folded in on itself over and over and denser and denser, this moment _right now -_

"So close." Some part of Blake, tucked behind Blake's conscious mind like the dirty magazine behind the pillow, knew what she couldn't possibly. Blake was building towards something. The best part of the story. The climax. _The revelation_.

And then fingers and mouths and brushes of golden hair disappeared like someone had ripped the book right out of Blake's hands.

Blake's face shot up – open – faster and louder and more explosive than a cannonball, a split-second of literary rage that was stopped by the sight of Yang's face – the only face that could stop a cannonball in its spiral path – the only face Blake would ever forgive tearing away a book from her.

She looked as though she was watching the universe being born.

Every wandering star in Blake's head pulled into a singular galaxy at the thought. Order and peace from the depths of formless chaos, and a single kiss upon the cheek for the first twinkling in someone's night-turned eye. "I had no idea you were _such a tease_ , Yang."

"Blake, I – holy hell, you're incredible. I . . ." Yang fumbled for words when she was otherwise occupied, Blake was beginning to notice. Blake was beginning to like. Like watching a house of cards fall, over and over again. "I'm sorry, I know you were close, it's not fair to you, but I just, I need, I _need_ -"

Blake silenced her with about the only thing she could that didn't involve iambic pentameter – a kiss. Those were better than sonnets anyway, she figured. "Since when did either of us do anything like 'play fair'?" She leaned back again, slowly, languidly, like she was lying back on her deckchair, embracing the sun's warmth. Hopefully Yang enjoyed the sight of her in her "bathing suit". "Together. I'm game if you are."

There was a brief boxing match in Yang's mind between her own need to provide and Blake's permission to do otherwise – Blake could follow the match by the buckling of Yang's forehead. She'd never seen Yang crease before, but if ever there were a time for pressure to induce folding . . . "Okay." The fingers slipped rapid out from within Blake like spent shells, and Blake put some effort into preventing a disappointed noise. That would be the last thing Yang needed that didn't involve Blake spontaneously disappearing out from under her. "Tell me when it feels good." Yang moved her body to mirror Blake's own, splaying her legs around and over and under Blake's as she settled their centers close together.

"It feels good." Blake spoke instantly, on contact, as involuntarily in appearance as though she had been burned. In appearance.

"Hee hee." For most people, two hees in a row could have only been sarcastic. For Yang, they were a sign of restraint, about as common as a "Beware of the Tyrannosaurus" sign on the roadways. "No, I mean, when it feels really good."

"Like now?" Blake was casual, like she didn't have a pretty girl pressed up against her about as intimately as possible. Like eating ice cream and sitting on a bench. If some happened to drip between her breasts without her noticing, oh well.

Any genuine irritation Yang might have felt was not only buried in a shallow grave, but probably snuffed out in the first place, by her over-exaggeration. No peeve could survive an environment as harsh and unforgiving as that of childishness. "Am I gonna have to do something about that smart mouth of yours?"

"I wish you would." Blake carved the tone out of the slow giddy feeling boiling the back of her mind, mixing metaphors with all the casual disregard of someone who had much more important – and enjoyable - things to focus on.

Yang. And, a miracle in progress, movement.

Yang was every precious thing that had ever been and ever would be.

She was smiles like pearls, precious gifts on an anniversary, one perfect shape for every thought, slow and sweet, she'd ever have about Blake. She was eyes like perfume, intoxicating, an unmistakable signal she'd entered the room, a subtle invitation to come back into the dark places with her and explore each others' secrets. She was hands like frankincense and myrrh, holy relics, a sign of coming salvation and the saving of souls. She was hair like gold, laughter like gold, an existence like gold, worth her weight, height, breath, being, every single word and thought in purest gold, melted down and reshaped into the key to Blake's heart.

Well, not just her heart. Though apparently, some other places took a lot more turning of locks.

"Okay. It feels – oh - feels good, now." Her voice shook with each thrust like a wineglass beneath sound, and at any moment Blake thought she might shatter. "A-amazing, even."

"Absolutely incredible." Yang's response took the form of faster thrusts and an entwining of fingers – like the entwining of their legs – like the entwining of their thoughts – like the entwining of their lives, now. She might have said something, certainly, but that wasn't her real response. "You feel so good against . . . oh, fuck."

"M-more." Masks crumbled into dust, ribbons falling from ears, facades fading into the wind like they were never there at all. "Oh, yes, please, _more_!"

Yang was, to turn a phrase, a gem.

Then again, maybe Yang wasn't the gemstone. Maybe Blake was. Or rather, one in the making. A diamond, still quite rough. Heat and pressure were being thoroughly applied, and through the new, ecstatic sensation Blake couldn't help but feel as though she was being polished to a shine, formless carbon dust coalescing into something sturdier and stronger than steel.

Yang's hand clenched on her thigh, and Blake wondered what a diamond would become if the heat and pressure kept increasing. Perhaps a star? Like a diamond in the sky?

"This really does feel . . . _so_ good. Definitely in the top three best things I've ever felt." A pause for breath, a tongue across the lips. Yang was coming unraveled, and Blake wanted nothing more than to pull on the strings. "Thinking even in the top one."

"Feels pretty good from this end, too." Blake spoke as though breathless, mostly because she actually was. And if this was what drowning felt like, air was severely overrated. Possibly even poisonous. " _Ninjas of Love_ . . . mmph . . . did not prepare me for this."

"I don't . . . I don't wanna sound gr – ah - greedy, but . . ." Some people were all talk, but Yang could never be quite so static. At that particular moment she was all ragged breaths, a series of caverns she was desperately trying to fill before they swallowed up her faculties completely. At least, Blake presumed so, because she was making some of the exact same noises. "Can you kiss me, too? I think I . . . need . . ."

"Oh, Yang." Blake's voice broke through the fog in her head like a lighthouse beamed, like she was sure she was beaming now. "That may be the best idea I've ever heard."

They put everything they had, in terms of souls and strength and body parts, into the kiss, and it wasn't a far leap from there to the point where they got lost in each other.

Their tongues met as old friends on a new dance floor, swirling and writhing around each other with speed and surety Blake hadn't suspected either of them possessed, and a delicious feeling that must have been like being drunk slowly settled in from the tips of her ears to the bottom of her feet. Yang, a world unto herself of light and life and dreams the size of the sky, was all that Blake knew, all Blake remembered existing. She was born here, she would die here, and Yang sucked at her neck, and . . . Blake . . . nearly forgot her own name.

She wrapped a leg around Yang's back. She would not let herself be separated from reality ever again, not now that she knew what it was.

It was transcendental. Their heartbeats hit each other like particles in a collider, and something fundamental drove Blake onwards and upwards, leveraging her body into Yang's and pressing, pressing, pressing herself against the heat she found there, like nuclear fusion done with enthusiasm. Building towards something, combining as one, if only for a moment.

Heat. Sweat. Drive. _Yang._

They were even now racing towards an unseen finish, Blake set the message from the back of her mind aside for later sorting and sending.

Heavy breaths laced with lust and fleeting touches with uncertain, greedy fingers. A keening noise paired with fingernails down the spine. A reckless charge of flesh and warm breath.

_Tongues._

Blake pressed her tongue, roughly, the rough part, against Yang's breast, and savored the slow drag across her skin. " _Oh,_ Dust!" Yang cried out from someplace private Blake had built for herself long ago, someplace she hadn't expected to find someone else. " _Blake_ . . ."

Like a punch from a shotgun, like a blast from a fist, like Yang always tended to do. With the barest of movements, that word broke down something in Blake, and the realization ran into her as though it was a bike messenger, dropping valuable messages that had never been meant for her eyes.

They wanted to put Blake in a cage. A small one, plastic, with a handle on top and a metal door, and the only other component the humiliation of knowing they only thought of her as a pet in need of obedience training. They would force her there, with hate and taunts and jeering and dangers, so the only safe place in all of Remnant was the small box on the sidewalk they'd set up for faunus to sit in the corner and beg affection from. It wasn't a wound bleeding out, this life, or a disease that ate away at the mind or body. It was just a _pressure_. Constant, never-ending, slowly crushing – and Blake was not the type to become a diamond in the rough. She was too empty to do anything but crumple.

Yang made pressure for Blake, too. But hers was different. The rest of the world pressed against her, claustrophobic and evil-eyed, seeking to annihilate her existence. Yang pressed _outwards_ , from somewhere within Blake, pushing her best qualities to the surface to _fight back_. The quiet, stoic girl in the corner became the center of attention, the most marvelous wit in the room. The gloomy girl with a dark past became the joyful girl with a bright future. The girl who shut herself off became the girl who opened herself up. The girl with a ribbon in her hair became the girl with cute little kitty ears.

And it culminated here and now. Lightning struck Blake over and over – no, coursed _through_ her, _from_ her – with every upwards thrust. Heat rose, but comfortable, completing, and Blake felt like she was drifting even as her intent focused to a real, if turbulent, shape. She felt as though she was a mile off the ground, and in that moment Blake knew for certain who and what she was.

She wasn't a pet. She would never be a pet, no matter how much the world of Remnant wanted otherwise. Blake Belladonna was a _storm_ , dark but lit with jagged light, soft but driving with winds like turbines, beautiful and deadly and, yes, very, _very_ wet. And she was finally herself, for once in her life.

All it took for her to realize it was Yang saying her name.

"Thank you so much." Blake's voice wasn't quite like the falling petals. It was the falling sensation, but with a bloom at the end of it. Rewinding the footage, perhaps.

"For what?" Those two words may as well have been Yang's bonsai trees. Careful, slow, constructed peacefulness at the middle of a chaotic world.

Someday, Blake swore to herself, she'd pay Yang back a thousandfold. For now, though, all she could say was this: "Saving me a dance."

Those must have been the magic words.

There were fires. There were fireworks. There were volcanic eruptions. There were stars and supernovas and big bangs, and an entire chain reaction of flaming intensities, each one more impossible than the last.

And then there was Yang Xiao Long, who with a roar of unrestrained passion that would put the greatest literary minds to shame burst into real, literal golden flames along her entire body, and drove herself fully one more time into Blake. " _Ohhh_!"

The heat of the moment bore Blake aloft. "Oh, _fuck_!"

It was a series of cascading, upwards movements that burst from somewhere within Blake to the tune of a silence surrounded by instruments. Like the first time she'd ever done a backflip. Like climbing a tree. Like riding a wave – two waves – three waves. Like jump pads and no certainty of landing. Like a series of afterimages, springing from one to the next, climbing up an exhilarating, impossible staircase to the sky.

It was like more than that. It was like flying. It was like freedom. It was like dancing unscathed among the lightning.

It was precisely like walking through fire and being unburned.

This was the making of Remnant, or else its destruction; this was the place where the ground met the sky, where water and fire formed steam. It was a boiling ocean, an endless expanse of heat and sea and sky. It was someplace private, special, Blake had long ago built up for only herself – and now found Yang there, moaning her name.

Their special place, then. Theirs and theirs alone.

" _Blake!_ " Yang's voice cracked the atmosphere like an atomic bomb, but wavered like heat haze, for all its strength.

" _Yang_!" The feeling swelled in Blake – no, the feeling made Blake swell, move past the boundaries that were her physical self, extended her into greater awareness of her surroundings.

There was a sensation like shattering stars.

. . . and the storm passed, leaving two girls with big, bright eyes staring at each other as if to ask without words why they were no longer forces of nature, balanced precariously against each other, prepared to destroy the world and retake it for themselves.

And reality began to settle back in, messy hair and bite marks and heavy breathing and damp spots and altogether too much sweat. Suddenly, and how appropriate it would have been if the clock had just struck midnight instead of 9:30, the bed they'd been lying on, luxurious and far larger than anything they could ever need, was a bunk bed again, barely holding both their frames. It was almost like someone had poured cold water over the entire evening, especially with how drenched both Blake and her partner suddenly seemed.

Speaking of her partner. Yang blinked rapid, incandescent, most likely the morse code for 'huh', if the expression on her face was an accurate translator. "Did I just explode?"

And in response to that sentence, Blake broke out into laughter like breaking out of jail, every snort and coughing noise taking the opportunity to flee with her as she used Yang's hair as camouflage for her daring escape. Yang's laughter – rich as seven-layer cheescake – went out on a spending spree around the town shortly after, running into the escaped convict in a seedy bar and beginning a whirlwind romance that would end with them stumbling into each others' bed for the night.

They fell together. In love, in lust, and _towards_ the pillow this time, landing in a heap that, all the giggle fits and tiny kisses and cuddle piling that it was, could only be called a love nest. The chuckles and guffaws didn't really die out, so much as they went to sleep, and Blake was only too happy to tuck them in, pulling the covers up over her and Yang with a feeling like turning the last page of one of her favorite books.

_I just made love to Yang Xiao Long. Holy Dust._

"I never . . . that has never happened, I . . . no matter how . . . how _hard_ I . . . " Yang was blushing. Blake could hear it. Not in that her voice sounded slightly different as a result or anything, but in that her faunus ears could pick up the minute alterations in blood flow right underneath her cheeks. Astounding. "That was your fault."

"Well, I should certainly hope so." Smooth and hot as melted butter. It was good revenge for having been knocked flat as a pancake, Blake decided.

As if Yang had specialized pun-detecting senses which let her acknowledge their existence even when she had no way of hearing them – and that would just figure – she chuckled. "That is so embarrassing. That cannot have happened to anyone else in the history of ever." Like a hand reaching out to grasp Blake's own beneath the bleachers, Yang made the transition from mortification to concern so slow and tiny, so absolutely hidden, that no one but Blake could ever possibly notice. "I didn't hurt you, right?"

Blake shook her head, specifically in a way to make certain her hair lay artfully around her shoulders as she gazed into Yang's eyes. How deep into this was she? "Even if you had, it would have been worth it." Blake reached a hand out to brush aside a stray lock of hair from Yang's forehead. Perhaps she should ask for lessons. There was, it seemed, an art in artlessness, after all. "Like biting into the first bite of pizza before it cools down all the way." Not exactly her sexiest metaphor.

"Not exactly your sexiest metaphor." Right?

"A thousand pardons." One for every time Blake should have kissed Yang, but didn't. "Unlike some people I could mention, I can't be phenomenally attractive one hundred percent of the time."

"And yet somehow, you still always are." Yang's finger glided over Blake's cheek like a stray thought – uncontrolled, but gentle, and likely a very pleasant idea. "I mean, we just got done with some pretty hardcore girl talk, and I still really want to kiss you until you don't know which way is up anymore."

]Blake steadfastly refused to pay attention to the cheering squad doing calisthenics in her chest, instead focusing on her schooling – that was to say, schooling her face into a neutral stance. "So what's stopping you?"

Nothing, apparently. Wow.

After a few eons of blazing speed and starlit conversations, the rest of the universe faded away, leaving only the disappointing Remnant behind as Yang moved just an inch or two from Blake's body. "Man. I just realized: we are _incredibly_ goopy right now."

Blake was too busy remembering who she was to do anything like make brilliant observations. "You're right," was about all she could manage. Then one of the memories she was trying to chase after made a sharp left turn and exited her mouth like it was a hole in a fence. "The books never bothered mentioning this part."

Yang drew Blake into a friendly hug, with benefits, like the way it lasted beyond what most hugs did, or the light line of kisses up her chin and cheek, or the feeling of bare biceps pressing against her back. "What do you think? Cleanup can wait until morning?" Or the way, when Yang's voice dropped to that familiar seductive pitch, Blake could feel it rumbling in her chest. "After all, we're just gonna end up getting these sheets dirty again anyway . . ."

"Actually, I was thinking we'd better go ahead and do it now." Blake let her words warm and pop like bubbles in the bath and, ah, how apt. "We could save a lot of water and time if we . . . showered together."

"I like that idea." Of course she would. Yang would have cannonballed into a hypothetical bathtub offer, if it had been made. Blake couldn't truly say she minded the thought of cleaning up after. "But snuggles first, okay?"

Blake settled her head underneath Yang's chin as arms drew more tightly on her, and there was really no other word for it than belonging. "Mmkay."

Well, no. Belong wasn't the word of the moment, not really. Because this moment of stillness was a picture, a snapshot, the last frame of a movie reel, the end of a story chronicling a lonely life. But every ending, as it turned out, as the cliché had warned them, was a new beginning. Pictures might have been worth a thousand words, but Blake had always been stoic and soft-spoken. 'Mmkay', as odd as it sounded, was a word that could withstand the world.

Let others have blindingly lengthy fits of ecstasy and eternal bliss as their purpose in life. Things turning out okay in the end was all that Blake had ever wanted, all that she'd never believed she could have, and all that she been given.

Mmkay.

And then Yang was giggling, because she couldn't stand there not being an epilogue – a first chapter.

"So, uh . . . " Yang chuckled like the rustling of pages, and Blake was certain that if she looked over she'd be in danger of falling all over again. "How're those heartstrings holding up?"

Blake couldn't help her laughter, even if it did make catching her own thoughts much harder. And she'd just managed to get a hold of her breath, too. "They're singing, Yang. Absolutely singing."

Perhaps, but the room was silent, save for labored breaths and, finally, a pleased hum. "Not exactly sure what that means, to be honest." Yang's smile surely lit up the room, for everything seemed brighter even when Blake wasn't looking at her. "But . . . it sounds good."

Blake snuggled into arms like trees and a body like the Earth itself and nuzzled under Yang's chin, forgoing laughter entirely – there were better options in play, anyway.

There was a tiny bit of breath, as though the earlier panting and groaning had forgotten something and said "goodbye" on their way back out. "Blake? Are you purring?"

Blake felt like she was going to wake up in the morning transformed into a beautiful butterfly, the way Yang's arms cocooned around her. Which sounded silly, but then, so had a lot of things, lately."Your fault." Still good.

"That's . . . wow." Yang sounded for all the word as if she'd woken up in a new, fantastic world of unknowable wonders. "You have no idea how awesome that is to hear you say."

Blake snuck a kiss, quick as a bullet and about as metaphorically deadly, on Yang's collarbone. "I hope it's as awesome as you made me feel."

"Geeze," Yang sounded genuinely embarrassed. They'd stretched far enough into unfamiliar territory that night – what was a bit more? "Was it really that good?"

"Singing heartstrings."

"If you say so." Yang was playing with Blake's hair again, and Blake guessed somewhere along the way she had to have done something right.

"I do say so. There's a special place in my heart just for you." Blake's finger tapped on Yang's nose at the final word of it, like she was typewriter – a million unsaid words waiting to be brought forth. "Maybe even two of them."

"You have two hearts? I didn't know that." The many of Yang's teeth Blake had already seen a million times decided to introduce her to the rest of the extended family, and so Yang's grin grew past its normal enormity. "Makes sense in retrospect, though. You've got _way_ too much goodness in you for just one heart, after all."

Blake was certain of Yang's typewriter status, now. The only problem was the lack of white-out anywhere on hand. Only thing to do when typos happened was pretend they were always supposed to be that way and press forwards. "You must not have been paying attention in our Faunus History lectures, then." And press forwards she did, like an army attacking a storybook, an advance in absurdity. "All faunus have two hearts."

Yang's face – absurd though it sounded – seemed to shift into some sort of crystalline structure. It always did when she was bewildered. Beautiful, somewhat fragile, and suddenly slower and sturdier than it had been just moments before. "Wait, what?"

Blake could act casual while palming a knife. She could school her face into that of a schoolgirl, all ditz and eager attitude, while constructing assassination plans in her head. She could act the part of the fool to perfection, even as she worked to overthrow an entire system from within. But there and then, it was all she could do to stop herself from giggling and giving away the game. "We need both of them to pump all the extra blood. It's the only way to deliver oxygen to our extra body parts."

"You're messing with me, aren't you?" If one could peel away crystals and find extremely suspicious fruit at their center, that would be an apt description of the look on Yang's face. Since one couldn't, there was no apt descriptor, and she was merely on-guard.

"Perish the thought. I'm telling the plain, unvarnished truth." A small tittering erupted from Blake's mouth. The traitor. Taken in by a pair of pretty eyes. "Cross both my hearts."

"You are totally messing with me! Aaah!" If they weren't both lying down, this hug Yang was giving Blake would have lifted her six inches off the ground or, metaphorically speaking, about seven feet. "I'm so proud of you!" Somewhere in the wide, wide world of Remnant, there was a hurricane going on. Being in one of Yang's hugs felt like the exact opposite of that.

"On a list of odd things to hear while you're laying in bed with your lover, 'I'm proud of you' ranks pretty highly, I think." Blake took comfort in Yang's broad, strong arms, because there really wasn't much in the way of choice.

"Oh, sorry. Here, lemme try that again." Yang coughed, and if ever there was a sound like aiming a cannon felt, that would be really, really close, though not exactly it. "Oh, Blake. I am consumed with lust."

"Perfect. Absolutely perfect." Blake's ears twitched, like excited children raising their hands in class. Attention-seekers, they were, at least tonight.

"Don't you mean purr-fect?" And attention they would have. More than anything else so far, Yang's fingers on Blake's scalp left her unable to compose in her usual style. All she could think was _good_ , _yes_ , and the occasional _thank you_.

"Well, I suppose I do _now_." Blake's tone bordered on exasperation in much the same way that Vale bordered on Grimm country – despite the two's proximity, they really had nothing else to do with one another. "Didn't you already use that one, though?"

"Figured after three weeks waiting, I could use it twice." Yang's shrug let Blake know she thought that it was inevitable, and her gaze let her know she thought they might have been inevitable, too. "But hey, if I could wait for _this_ , I can wait for anything."

"I suppose it's time to itemize my list of reasons I love Yang Xiao Long with both of my hearts, then." A blistering list of lingering looks and thoughts held close to the heart. Blake hadn't bothered writing it down, though. It was too long, for one thing, and much harder to forget than her poetry. "You've certainly given me more than enough reasons to make additions in the past two hours alone."

"Gimme a couple more hours." Somewhere in the world, far from the hurricane, there was a sunflower dripping its nectar. Apparently, Yang was capable of sympathetic magic. "You might just have to get yourself a new journal."

"I suppose we'll just have to find out, then." Blake chuckled. It wasn't that there was something funny, it was just that to find things humorous in the near future, she sometimes needed a running start. "Though I have to admit, this isn't exactly how I imagined all this playing out in my head."

Yang beamed at her, and for all the creaks and crevices inherent to Beacon's construction and the thick curtains blocking the windows, Blake could swear there were stars shining upon her head. "Too many _Ninjas_?"

Blake snorted, an elegant sound, like a wet fish attempting to escape through a hole the size of a quarter. "Yang swept Blake up in her arms, a smooth and effortless motion like picking a flower – and removing flowers seemed to be what she had on her mind. 'I can no longer contain myself, Blake. I must have you, immediately, this instant.'"

Yang was _howling_. This was the kind of laughter people three thousand years from that moment would record in their myths and legends. Raw material to make an entire world with. Probably somewhere around the tropics, with suntans and string bikinis. "No, no, it's more like . . . She opened the door, and was assaulted by the sight of Blake, knuckle deep in her own crevices, panting her name. 'Hey," Yang said slyly, 'Need some help there?'"

Blake raised an eyebrow in a specific way she never had before. Associating a word or sentence with a particular movement of the body was an adequate mnemonic device, and the greater a possibility of reminding Yang she said that at a later date, the better. "I didn't realize you were an avid reader of the Ninja series."

"Please. Buxom, blonde, and good at sex?" Yang preened, like the reflection in a mirror one had just spent three hours polishing to a perfect shine. "I'm practically a protagonist."

"I can't say you're entirely wrong." Blake had, in fact, been thinking the same thing. Probably for a lot longer, admittedly, but the same thing nonetheless. "What else? We're two strangers, and the hotel only has one room left . . ."

"Ooh, even better," Yang enthused, which, speaking relatively to how she normally spoke, meant she was doing somewhere around 90 in a 25-mph zone. And about to hit the rockets she'd stolen and strapped to the sides of her bike. "We're both the stars of our school's volleyball teams and we're also the only two people left in the locker rooms."

Blake laughed, her heart feeling like it might, despite all evidence to the contrary, race alongside. Then again, it had been doing a good job keeping up so far this evening. "It's your birthday and I 'forgot' to get you a present. I guess I'll just have to do, won't I?"

"I dunno exactly what, but there's gotta be a line about unwrapping somewhere in there." Yang hugged Blake so tightly she could swear she felt her soul. It seemed an odd time for it, but Blake wasn't about to start complaining. "Oh, gosh, you've even got the ribbon thing going on."

"Clearly, it was meant to be." Blake was as serious and proper as Yang doing a bad job impersonaitng someone who was very serious and proper. Probably Weiss. "You, me, and 85,000 words of absolute nonsense."

Yang laughed, and picture coalesced in Blake's head of being buried in sand at the beach, underneath a cloudless blue sky. "This is great stuff. We should be writing it down so future generations can bask in our glory." Somewhere deep down, a jealous part of Blake decided that she was to be the only one who ever got to do any basking in regards to Yang.

But there were more important things to discuss than something as obvious as that. "If you'll let me throw in just one more corny line." Something in Blake's head realized that she wasn't going to be able to settle for only one more, of course – corny lines were her potato chips, too salty, too good, and not at all healthy for her. "I'm really glad it didn't happen the way it does in the books. All at once, clear-cut, without the awkward stopping places and too drawn-out conversations. That kind of thing. This feels more like . . ." The words tasted so sweet, Blake took a moment to savor them. "This feels more like a story we wrote for ourselves. Our thoughts. Our ideas."

"Our happy ending." Yang handed Blake the world on a platter of pixie dust – all Blake had to do was believe.

"It isn't over yet." Maybe if Blake gave her cynicism what it wanted one last time, it might go away and leave her alone for a while. It wasn't fair of her to expect Yang to keep chasing it off, after all. "We could still technically be a tragedy."

Yang kissed Blake like she was reaching back in time, seeking to draw a memory forth from someplace she'd left behind. Blake felt she could do no less that help her find what she was looking for. A payment for burning her cynical side to ashes. "Too late for that."

Place period. End chapter. Skip the editing, just for now. Settle in on Yang's shoulder and close eyes, just for a little bit.

Well, just until Yang starts writing the epilogue's epilogue with her giggling. Effortless, perfectly graceful prose. "You're not going to believe this." The laughter entered Yang's voice like it owned the place and had familiar spots to fit inside the furniture in.

"You've made a habit of causing unbelievable things to happen before my disbelieving eyes." _Then I saw her face, na na na na, now I'm a believer . . ._ "Hit me."

"It's, like . . ." Yang's laughter was like the rain in the desert that was Blake's life, she could swear up and down the savannahs it was so. "I literally just got done bursting into flame in the middle of your legs."

"Well, I can definitely believe that." In an alternate universe, somewhere where words were currency, the main export of the island nation of Belladonna was sarcasm. It was still almost true here. "I was there, after all. Quite intimately involved, I should say."

"Not what I meant." The first mark of genuine annoyance the entire evening, like the pom-pom tip-top bit of a ski cap marking the hiker buried under an avalanche of affection. "I was, you know, leading up to stuff!"

"Alright, I'll be gentle." Blake showed mercy, which seemed somewhat out of character. She'd been more than merciless for the past few hours, after all. "What were you leading up to?"

Yang tittered, which might have been appropriate considering Blake's vicinity to certain not-fully-explored territories, but pointing that out would have been crass. "You're _really_ warm. Way warmer than I am."

Blake blinked, once, and like that was a switch for the grandiose machine pumping out tiny bobblehead figured that was her brain, erupted into giggles. And a snort, because apparently she was back to being merciless, even to herself. "I suppose that is somewhat ironic." A last few bit of laughter and the cogs were whirring again. Soon there would be enough tiny figures of Yang, smiling crooked from all the bobbing their head was doing, to go around. "Not too hot to handle, I hope."

"Not too hot. Not too cold, either." Yang, of course, as a country, would export mostly puns and import mostly dramatic speeches, but with the nation of Belladonna she'd share a roaring trade of tiny kisses. Like that one. "You're just right."

"You're pretty swell yourself." The swell of the storm, perhaps – certainly, a signal to Blake's own thunderclouds forming. "Figuratively and, if you plan on snuggling my naked body all night, quite literally, the cat's pajamas."

"Blake, you're perfect. You're absolutely perfect." Sometimes it seemed like Yang didn't portray emotions so much as ride them in a rodeo. See if she ever fell off. At least that was how Blake pictured it. It seemed to be what was happening now; laughter as ringing as four bells attached to a wheel rolling down a thousand-foot hill slowed, as if hitting mud beneath its treads, and gave way to a look that could only be called oddly serious. "I mean it. You're perfect for me in every way."

Blake battered this idea about in her head like, well, like a cat, playing with a ball of yarn. "If that's true, it's only _because_ of you in the first place. I owe a lot of who I am just to talking with you."

"Maybe that's true." Yang shifted, just a little, and Blake could swear the fabric of reality bunched up like a blanket to make room. "Because sometimes I could swear that one day all my deepest fantasies decided 'I'm gonna take a nice long walk and think about heavy stuff' and bam, there you were."

"I do enjoy the thought of me making all your fantasies come true." Blake's giggles could roll down hills, too, it seemed, though her hill was shorter and covered in flowers, among other differences. "You deserve it. Special girl."

"You know, when you say it, I can sort of believe you." There was a fragility to this smile, certainly, but there was a fragility to glass, too, and Yang was no less sharp or strong for needing a moment not to break. "What I'm having trouble believing, though, is that . . . is that you're real. Is that this is real. Like, I know we did the whole pinching thing earlier, but it keeps sneaking up on me that maybe we just didn't pinch hard enough?" Yang looked in Blake's eyes like they were across a chasm, and she was having difficulty deciding whether or not she could make the jump. "I never thought I'd end up . . . like this. Anything but alone. Not lonely, but by myself."

"Never while I'm around." Blake gave out promises, in various sizes, like they were sticks of gum or fish or slices of cake or even like big heavy books. The thing was, she usually gave them out like they were the last stick of gum, last fish, last slice of cake, last book she had to read. In that she didn't. Until, now . . . "I can promise you that."

"That's the whole point." If sneaking could be defined as moving head on towards somebody faster than they could react, Yang snuck a kiss. "I figured I wouldn't ever end up with anyone in particular, and I was kind of fine with that." Her voice wasn't distant, precisely, but it was traveling. "I'd have my share of fun . . . maybe a bit more, you know, lots of cute people out there . . . but in the end I'd grow old by myself, never settling down or having kids or anything like that." Her eyes twinkled, like a spirit of mischief had claimed godhood of the unfounded world in Yang's eyes. Before someone else snatched up the prime real estate. "Maybe get a cat to keep me company."

Blake laughed without restraints. It was a dangerous thing, removing your restraints on a roller coaster like Yang Xiao Long, but Blake heard cats always landed on their feet. "How does it feel knowing that all your dreams are coming true?"

"Honestly?" The path of Yang's pupils traced nothing short of a dryer letting the question tumble inside her head. It was easy to tell, because of how soft and warm the words came out. Yang was sort of like the fabric softener of life, in that she made everything a little easier and smelled vaguely of wildflowers. "It feels like I'm in some sort of fairy tale. And I know you're the author because every little detail is perfectly in place."

"I appreciate the compliment." Compliments were small rarities to Blake – pennies on the sidewalk. Yang was like finding out every penny she'd ever found had been left purposefully as a trail to a mountain of cash. "But to be honest, if I were the author, we'd have either gotten together much sooner, because I'm impatient, or much later, because I'm an angsty teenager who lives on the suffering of other angsty teenagers."

"Far as I'm concerned, the only angsting we're going to do is when we don't get in line early for Pudding Day in the cafeteria." As if Yang weren't the type to cut lines – and the type to let Blake go ahead of her. "You deserve a better genre than angst, and I'm gonna give you all the romance and comedy you could ever dream of."

Blake had long ago locked up her heart, thrown away the key, and trusted her skills at thievery to get her through any time worth taking heart in. Never had she thought that someone might get all the way in just by walking up and asking nicely. And yet the tumblers moved, one at a time, but rapidly, one with each word, something in the aorta or perhaps the left ventricle creaked as it opened, and Blake remembered what it was like to love again.

The strangest part of all, of course, was that all this had already happened two hours, two minutes, two weeks, two months before – and would probably happen all over again tomorrow.

It was enough to make Blake want to take shots at the impossible, herself. "Think we have a chance of going on forever?"

"Wouldn't put it past us." Something in Yang's smile reminded her that flowers could, strange as it seemed, still grow out of the ground where volcanic ash scattered. Once in a lifetime, perhaps. "We're both kind of stubborn, after all."

Thanks to her feline eyes, Blake saw a lot of things in the darkness: movement, shape, color . . . Yang, now . . . but at that moment, lying in the presence of impossibilities and rethinking what they might be, Yang acting as a signal flare to guide her, she saw something entirely out of the ordinary even for a Faunus to find sneaking in the shadows.

"Something just occurred to me." She found the truth.

"Huh?" Yang's mood lent textures to the air, like temperatures. When she was happy, the world seemed a bit easier to move through. When she was turned on, each of Blake's breaths was laced with pheromones. When she showed interest in something, like she was now, everything seemed to tunnel in on her smiling face – though that last one seemed to happen a lot anyway. "What's that?"

"Earlier today, I was wondering to myself why I felt so comfortable taking off my ribbon around you." Blake picked the words up and carried them out, one at a time. Not because they were heavy, but because she'd finally seen how to get them in order and just one wrong move could be an entire avalanche. "At first, I thought it was all the time we've spent together, but I spent a lot of time around a lot of people and all that ever did was make me tie my ribbon a little tighter each morning. So maybe it wasn't that, but how close we were becoming. Or maybe it was that you seemed to accept me for who I was."

"Or maybe the lack of fabric with your head in my lap was your subtle way of trying to hint that it was okay if I let my hand wander a little while I was massaging your scalp?" Yang poured the words, rather than said them, a thick brew of heat, caffeine, and healing energies that could only be tea. Blake felt it fill her, warm her, from the toes up, and with a sudden jolt she was alive.

Definitely tea of some kind, and now Blake was remembering where else she tasted tea, and suddenly words were very difficult. ". . . maybe." Blake was pretty sure that was a word. Possibly even the right one. "But at the same time, not really. None of those answers sounded quite right, even if they all, you know, played parts. I don't even feel comfortable taking it off when I'm by myself, really. But when I'm around you . . ." Blake trailed off in imitation of her own thoughts. They did that sometimes, wandered off by themselves and brought back interesting things to play with. And if imitating her thoughts had led her to Beacon, to Yang, to happiness in the first place, why not continue holding her own mental state as a role model? "That's when it finally hit me. What made you so special to me. I didn't expect to find an answer to my question, but I did."

It was an odd thing to call her when Blake had been getting drunk off of her all evening, but Yang seemed sober. Seriously so. Straight-edge, even. "What did you end up finding out? If you wanna tell me."

"I always felt like I couldn't take it off, even when I was all alone. I just didn't feel comfortable." They weren't words to smile at, and yet Blake felt her two lips bloom. Perhaps, contrary, her garden grew with tea, not water. Tea and girls who knew nothing about gardening. "But lying here in the darkness with you, it hits me that even though I seem like a person who likes solitude, I've never really been alone before."

"Is this some kind of riddle?" Her words climbed up the musical scale like they were seeking a vantage point to look for rests, or possibly treble clefs. "I'm not really good at those. I put all my points into punsmithing."

And Blake put all of hers into stoicism, and yet she seemed to be botching all her rolls to avoid guffaws this evening. Huh. She'd picked up more B&B lingo than she'd realized. "N – well. Yes. But I've already solved it, if only by complete accident."

"Hard to believe you can do anything by accident." It was odd of Yang to say so, when her hands were such obvious safety nets in the acrobatic routine commonly called life. Odder, when Blake found herself falling on purpose.

"Every time I've thought I was alone, I was actually incomplete. Missing something. And though I learned to ignore it so well that I forgot the feeling was there, it gnawed at me." It was a familiar sensation, but from the other side of a change in time and circumstance. Blake suspected she might feel the same if she ever came back to visit Beacon as an accomplished Huntress, right down to the sense that things maybe hadn't been as bad as she'd thought, even if they were better now. "Or . . . sanded me down. Like it wanted to shave off every place that the good things were supposed to fit into me before I got the chance to find my place in the world."

"You deserve so much better than that." Yang's voice was sad, but certain. There was a painting of a samurai withstanding a sea of youkai on a hill overlooking a town, somewhere in her words.

"And I got something better than that." Blake realized a scant word into her response that she hadn't even tried to deny that she deserved better. Already, Yang was having an effect on her. She didn't know why she expected differently, because, after all . . . "Because now, somewhere soft, still, and maybe a little bit sensual, I've found the missing parts of me. My triumph, my hope, my optimism. You." Blake gazed upon Yang like she was a million years in the past, the first fire the world ever created. "When you're with me, I feel like I can truly be by myself. As strange as that sounds."

"We're two sides of the same coin." Yang crackled with light, warmth, and joy. The only strange thing about it was the lack of smoke. "You complete me, and I complete you. Right?"

"Right." Blake looked over the contours and clashes between her body and Yang's own, and tried to get used to the idea she'd stumbled upon. "Two parts of the same whole." It was surprisingly easy, really. "I'm the Yin, and you're the . . ."

" . . . Yang." And there was the pun, from the look on her face, that Yang's entire life had been building up towards. The next look on her face seemed to express a realization that what her entire life had been building towards had come and gone. "Wait a second, doesn't that make me the sun? What about all my sunshine talk a while ago?"

"I didn't really want to say anything, because it seemed so important to you. But between the two of us, you're the one who literally glows white-hot with passion." Those were some of the best times, Blake reflected. Like packing a giant into a human form. Like falling stars walking the face of Remnant. Like symphonies given flesh. Oh, how Yang could glow. "Besides, can you really see yourself as the moon?"

"Well . . ." But Yang could dim, too. Sometimes that seemed impossible, but then, every so often, she'd shrink in on herself a little, and Blake would have to remind herself it was true. ". . . you like the moon."

Blake traced Yang's face with her eyes, and then her fingers. But always with her heart. "And I like you." No, that wasn't enough. "I love you, in fact." That didn't seem like enough, either, but Blake didn't have anything else to give. "So there is that, I suppose."

Blake's words must have cooked properly in the heat of the moment – Yang, too seemed to find them worth savoring. Her fingers running gentle patterns without direction, like careless constellations down the trail of Blake's spine, seemed like more than adequate compensation for whatever small favor Blake had done her. "I know it's kind of a strange question to be asking at this point, but . . . do you want to be my girlfriend?"

Blake could have told Yang she already knew the answer to that question. She could have pretended to think about it. She could have made some joke about how, well, they were already partners in one sense of the word; what was one more? She could have articulated how much nothing in the world could possibly compare to the opportunity she'd just been given. She could have said or done almost anything and everything, and any and all of it would have been entirely appropriate to the situation at hand.

But sometimes metaphors and poetry and clever turns of phrase just aren't necessary anymore.

Blake kissed Yang on the lips. Blake said "Yes." Yang smiled. That was all that was important. That was all that had ever been important.

That, and the fact that the door to their room had just slammed open loudly enough to break the night's silence into individually wrapped pieces, which was the kind of sentence that only made sense when you had about six gallons of adrenaline and an ocean of mortification flooding your brain. "We're back." Weiss, in her usual fashion, had to remove the shades of self-aggrandization before she could see what anyone else was wearing to an evening's events. Or, in this case, not wearing. "You wouldn't believe the sales they – oh my goodness."

"Toooold yoooooou," Ruby sang, precisely like the soundtrack to a horror movie creeping up on the two teenagers lying naked in bed. This was not how Blake envisioned stardom to descend upon her. "Those two have been spending _way_ too much time together lately."

**0-0-0-0**

In the general chaos that followed, the only things able to be determined were that A) Weiss was going to rent a hotel room for her and Ruby for the evening, and B) Blake was "gonna be the bestest sister-in-law ever!"

The noise Ruby makes when hit by a pillow at high speed had been determined long ago, but it never hurt to check up on these things.

**0-0-0-0**

The cool night air contrasted against the warmth of Blake's body, and Yang wished things might remain balanced that way for the rest of eternity. Blake looked beautiful. More than looked, she _felt_ beautiful, every dip and curve a turn for Yang's mind to race around like a motorcycle, exhilaration and adrenaline spiking the taste of dewdrops and rock candy yet lingering on her tongue. A thrill, a meaning, a rush of air and breath of life.

And gorgeous. So absolutely gorgeous – dark satin and whispered shade and honeyed words and perfect pearls given flesh, and life, and more kindness and strength than Yang knew what to do with. Still flush with effort and racing heart, even now, even asleep and the best was that she was smiling, purring, dreaming of –

Yang wanted to believe it was her.

She'd put her yakuta back on, and despite a small, insistent, cloying, opportunistic, well, heck with it, the word was _horny_ , voice in the back of Yang's mind, it suited her sleeping form, slightly messy and hanging loosely off one shoulder. So put together, even as such a mess as Yang had made her, and in all her wise decisions and careful considerations Blake had chosen her to kiss, to hold, to _make love_.

Well, not really that last one. At least not like people meant it, anyway. They may have had sex a few hours ago, but they'd been creating love for far longer than just tonight.

Yang never believed she could find herself content in stillness.

A thumb and four fingers down the black length of her hair, like silk, like liquid obsidian. "Your hair's better than mine. I'm so jealous."

It would be an inane thing to say even if her partner – in more than one way now, of course - were awake, but that didn't seem like a good enough reason not to say it. And it was true, besides. Blake had everything Yang didn't and everyone claimed she did: the quick wit, the beautiful figure, the smile to launch a thousand ships, the wonder and optimism and happiness. The heart big enough to save a world from itself.

She was her sunshine, her only sunshine.

Yeah. Blake was her sun, and she . . . her moon.

. . . no, that didn't sound right, thinking about it now. The moon was a big old broken thing hanging in the sky, and although Yang might have had problems she was a long way from "broken", thank you very much. Plus Blake had a point about that whole "glowing with passion" thing. In retrospect, it was sort of obvious.

But then, a lot of things were 20/20 hindsight when Yang's life was all about charging forwards. Like how relying on her Semblance to win a pumpkin-carving competition was going to cause more problems than it solved. Or the fact that relying on your Semblance to make cookies was more likely to make cooked houses. Or the fact that relying on your Semblance to . . . well. There were a lot of nails that particular hammer could drive through six feet of steel, and that in and of itself was the problem.

They'd nicknamed Yang "collateral damage". Blake could probably come up with a better one.

But there were other things obvious only after the historical fiction. Like how of course Yang wasn't going to be able to find her mom with nothing but her little red sister and her little red wagon. Or the fact that, no matter how hard Yang tried, not everyone was going to like her. Or how far away Beacon really could be from home, sometimes. Or . . . or how _fast_ everything went when you didn't try to keep up with it all.

Yang wasn't quite so foolhardy as to try riding a motorcycle backwards, except that her life felt a lot like that sometimes. Everything behind her, so obvious, plain as day. Everything in front of her, she could only hope everyone else was quick enough on the uptake and quick enough on their feet to get out of the way. Because there was no way _she_ was gonna be able to tell what was going on.

Until now. Because Blake had her back, which in many ways, meant Blake was right in front of her, to tell her what was going to happen next. That had to be it, because suddenly Yang could see the future crystal clearly, and it was warm and real and bright, and Blake. Because Blake loved her.

She _loved_ her.

Blake said Yang was her light, her sun, her needs and wants and everything she ever wanted to be. She said Yang was beautiful, intelligent, kind, and, and sexy, and then she proved herself with whispers and touches and gasps between stolen kisses, and Blake said that she needed Yang just as much as Yang needed her.

She _loved_ her.

And it was so obvious, in retrospect. Almost as obvious to Yang, now, as the fact that Blake didn't blush with her cheeks – well, she did, but when she _really_ blushed, she blushed with her ears. Yang didn't think even Blake knew that about herself.

So maybe it really was the other way around. She was the sun, and Blake was the moon?

Didn't sound right either. Didn't have the ring of truth to it. Couldn't be right. After all, the moon was a still big old broken thing, and Blake was . . . gosh. If Yang was yet unbroken, Blake was all but unbreakable. Immune to collateral damage – but that didn't mean Yang wouldn't take a second thought for her sake. So what were they, then . . . ?

A memory leapt out at Yang like the second Ursa from the bushes after she rustled up the first one all on her own. Something age-old, from back when science class was just as much fun as learning how to hunt Grimm.

A binary star. Two suns, each one brilliant in their own way, orbiting around a common center of mass. Though, apparently, tonight, they'd both gone supernova.

Guess you could say that her and Blake's love was _written in the stars_.

Blake shifted, and Yang froze, guilty, awed. The moonlight gleamed in her hair, and for a split-second Yang believed if she titled her fingers ever so slightly she might catch some and keep it for a cloudy day.

Blake made her believe in miracles. Blake made her feel like _she_ was a miracle. Something incredible. She could never see it, but Blake possibly could. She looked at her like she might, looked at her like she was the first breaking beam of sunlight after a weeklong rainstorm, breathed her name like it fit into a song that had been incomplete her entire life, came undone beneath her clumsy fingertips, and Yang believed in miracles like fairy tales and hope and happy endings, and possibly even in herself.

Blake snuggled a little further into Yang's arms, and that just about did it. Poetry was exhausting, even involuntarily, even with such a ready subject quite literally at hand. There was a time when even she had to give up the fight, after all. The sun must set, and the moon – or the other sun, as it were - would rise soon enough.

Yang moved, carefully, put the last of her energy into being as sure and graceful of her movements as her girlfriend, what a word, what a world, and placed the gentlest kiss she could allow herself on Blake's head. Right between the ears. Maybe a kiss could serve as an angel's crown, she thought.

"Singing heartstrings." Yang completed the final stanza. With, of course, a flourish. "Think I get it after all."

She surrendered.

**Author's Note:**

> So you've made it to the end! That means you either enjoyed my fic, or got far enough into it that you realized if you didn't finish it, it would be a complete waste of your hard-earned time. If it's the second, I'm so sorry.
> 
> This fic has been, in part, an early Christmas gift to a Tumblr user dcgcharlie - one of the first people to ever really believe in my writing. Well, the first one who wasn't . . . obligated to. 
> 
> At any rate. Have a good day!


End file.
